


drag me in with maybes, part two

by sp201120122013



Series: Drag Me In With Maybes [3]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 23:30:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 65,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp201120122013/pseuds/sp201120122013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>well, this is it! the final chapter of this story....one year, four days, 239 pages and 128,000 words later. thank you so much to you if you have stuck with this fic and read it all the way to the end. it means so much, and i can only hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.</p><p>--xxx sparky</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I stayed away from work that whole week. I couldn't make it. I called in sick to school, though I wasn't. Or maybe I was. I wasn't so well suited to distinguish right now. I stewed around in a pair of pajama pants and my pullover from that first time I had touched him. I hadn't watched it since, and it was stiff with sweat. Fresh and old sweat. I was sleeping here and there, aided by a just-expired bottle of Ny-Quil. I was going through night sweats, and I was talking all the time. My brother had come down to check on me at my mother's orders, leaving a peanut butter sandwich on a plate that I discovered when I creaked my eyes open at some hour, any hour. I wasn't sure.

When I finally came to enough sense to waddle upstairs for water, my clothes clinging to me, that was when he told me I had been talking in my sleep. He didn't tell me what I had said, but the way he glared at me like I was something sick succeeded my suspicions. I had been talking about Frank. It made sense, as I had been dreaming about him, too. Nothing in excess. More like a video on repeat, his pajamas rustling and then his eyes bulging and then me running, running, running. I excused myself from the kitchen to vomit again.

Vomiting had been my main past time since that night. Thankfully, the universal fear of biohazard and the natural human aversion to regurgitation was excuse enough to keep me out of the real world. That, and there had actually been a blizzard. I didn't learn of it until I got out of the basement long enough to peek out of the living room curtains. Jersey was shut down, a city in a globe. I hoped that the snow and ice would stay long enough to keep me undercover. Perhaps if I actually covered myself, if I left my bed for an igloo, I'd stop waking up queasy and instead wake up dead.

It seemed like the best solution.

I couldn't see Frank. It was impossible. One look between us and he would know. He already knew what I had been doing there, that night. Not only had he seen my face, but he had seen me clumsily tugging my hand out of my pants before I fled. He wasn't stupid. The sharpness I'd admired in him before was biting me in the can now. I was done. There was no way I could get myself out of this, not a way in the world. I leaned over my bed and got sick again, briefly, throwing up toast and water. It made me think of sandwiches, and Frank, and I heaved harder.

Despite the constant sweating and vomiting, and my mother's distant efforts to nurse me--she didn't want to get too close--I still had to go back to living. The snow melted quickly in one day's leap of temperature, and I was forced out of the house and off to school. I was getting D's and C's this semester. My parents were not pleased. They told me I'd better hold onto that job at the deli, they said. They said I should get used to working there, because that might be all I ever get in life. My brother sneered at me through all their lectures. He was in the running for valedictorian. They never failed to remind me how much better he was than me.

It wasn't hard to top me off, though. After class finally ended, after my car huffed and stalled through the cold roads, I parked it and crept through puddles of slush to the deli door. The store was empty. It was too early for Frank, but apparently too early for anyone else, too. My manager was working today, filling in for one of the sick girls. A lot of people had been sick lately, she told me. It must be a bug, she speculated. I smiled, feeling my stomach lurch through my own lingering sickness. I didn't have a bug. Just a bad case of trepidation.

The hours went slowly, but that was fine. When three o'clock finally hit, I wanted to turn the clock backwards. I wanted time to keep him as far away as possible. Frank coming was the epitome of disaster, and every time I heard the bell on the door jingle my insides leapt and my skin crawled. I served coffee after coffee to faces I forgot, and felt myself growing sicker and sicker as more time passed. I didn't want Frank to come, but at the same time, I felt as if I'd die if I didn't see Frank. Dying seemed like an excellent way to avoid the situation, though.

Twelve past four hit, and the door opened again. There had been a lull in activity, and my palms had sweated through every second of it. Frank came in at twelve past four, his hair flopping out from under his knit hat. He was wearing gloves and a coat, and despite every apprehension I had and every night I had spent sick leading up until today, all I could think of was how pleased I was that he was finally bundling up more. He had a smirk on his face, sticking up from the neck of his scarf as he swaggered over, an even heavier confidence in him than usual.

He didn't demand anything, didn't ask a thing. He just looked at me. I stared back only a second before I ducked down my head and started getting his usual order together. Maybe he hadn't known it was me, even though my face had ben clear and wide in his window that night. I was hiding it now. I didn't want him to see my face, burning up right now as it was. I was embarrassed to exist, more so because I had been caught than for what I had done in the first place. I had been justifying my actions to myself for the past week, but it still hadn't quite worked.

"Saw you." I heard Frank say as I was pulling out my wallet and slipping one of my own ten-dollar bills into the register, covering Frank as usual.

"Wh, what?" 

"Saw you outside my window last week." His voice was low, deliberately keeping quiet. There was no one else in the store right now, still hiding out from the weather, but he was a step above silent nonetheless. 

"I--"

"Saw you run away." He was starting to smile again, and I jerked my head back, looking for my manager. She couldn't be around to hear this. But I didn't see her. She must be in the back room. "Saw you pull your hand out of your pants when you left." He giggled, covering his mouth with his hand. "So it's like that, huh?"

"It's...I...."

"How long you been doin' it? Since you found out where I lived?"

"N--no...."

"Before then?"

"N-no, just....just...."

"Just that one night?"

"Y--yeah. J-just that one night."

"Fuckin' creepy."

I ducked my head down, trying to sink into my collar.

"I could call the cops, yknow. You're like, old."

I felt my nerves wrench up and my eyes start to water. My jaw and hands shook, and I looked up at him, dripping over the counter, rosy cheeked like he always was. "P-please don't. I, I won't do it again. I...please. I'm so sorry, I...I know it's...it's bad, I..."

"So what are you going to do?" He was beaming at me, chin resting in the cup of his hand. He licked his lips. Deliberately. I swear it was deliberate, the way he mad them so shiny and wet.

"I....I, I don't know...."

"You gonna buy me something?"

"If...if you want? I'll....I'll get anything, um....um, here's your food...by the way...um..."

"Alright. Bring me something, then."

"Wh-what?"

"Somethin' good. Surprise me. Ooh, booze. Bring me booze!" he realized, slapping his hands down on the counter.

"B-booze?"

"Yeah, you can get me that, right?"

"I, I might be...able...I don't...."

"Well, you better. Else you're kinda fucked, huh?"

"Wh--"

"I can tell my parents about you any time. Whenever I want. Yknow that?"

"Don't, please!"

"Well. Guess you better get me some stuff then, huh?

"I..."

"You can come to my house again. I'll let you in."

"Y-you'll what?"

"Let you in the window. You want in, don't you?" His chatter slowed down and his tone changed. He shifted sharp from eager boy to, to something else. Something slow-sliding and...hot. It made me shiver and got me sweaty. "I'll let you in."

"But I..."

"You want in?"

"Y...yes, I...I...."

"Well, see you then."

"S-see you?"

"Midnight."

And then he was scuttling out of the store, his bag in his hand as he kicked open the door and set off stomping down the street.


	2. Chapter 2

 

I couldn't find any booze. None at all. I ransacked my parents' liquor cabinet as soon as I got home, but found nothing. It was being used as a storage cabinet for old modeling projects that my brother had done in middle school. I  pushed aside bottled ship after bottled ship, but there was no alcohol, not anywhere. I checked for beer in the garage, for wine in the fridge, but nothing. I even made a daring run up to snoop around in my brother's room. My family had gone out for dinner without me, which conveniently gave me a lot of leeway to look. It did no good, though. There was nothing.

 

I wished that I had made some friends in college, gone to at least a single party or met a single supplier. I knew I wouldn't be able to go to the store myself and try and sneak anything. This being a "college town", with a larger university nearby, not just my small community college, the liquor laws were strict and underage drinking was very closely monitored. Maybe Frank didn't know how old I was. I wasn't sure. But I was sure that I was going to fail him.

 

I sat on my bed for hours, watching the television as primetime shows trickled into late night shows. There were commercials abound for beer. I wished that I could reach inside of the television and take out a can, just one can. It wouldn't be much for Frank, but better than the empty hands I would show up with. My hands were empty now, face-up on my knees and shaking. I couldn't draw. Frank real, Frank noticing me somehow had destroyed him as a model. Or perhaps it was just anxiety.

 

Him looking at other people was significantly different than him looking straight at me. It was different when I could slant his eyes towards another, shadowy figure, or put him gazing off into the distance. It was different when recording those few, tiny moments when he would flicker his eyes up at me after I prepared his order. But this, when he was staring me down and pinpointing me with those warm eyes, moving back and forth between coldly interrogative and warm, dark....seductive? Was that the word? That was the word for the change in his gaze. That was it. The word I had heard on so many daytime soap operas was finally finding application in my own life.

 

Frank was perfect, certainly. Unsullied, though...not so much anymore. Those rich Renaissance paintings never had their cherubs tip their heads back to the ceiling, rolling and writhing...and now inviting someone else to join. Was that what he wanted of me? Was that what he sought? Was he going to do that for me, instead of only in front of me? I couldn't tell. I had no idea. In the movies, when someone was asked over they were always taken to bed. Was Frank going to take me to bed? Was it possible for Frank and I to bed each other? Whether he would take me...no, he would have to. I couldn't touch him. If he were to touch me, that would be one thing....but for me to sully him was unheard of.

 

My alarm clock buzzer went off. It was eleven-fifteen. Time for me to head to Frank's. I left my sketchbook at home--I wouldn't be able to draw him. I hadn't been able to draw, not with all of this taking place. It was impossible. Too stressful. Too much to think about. I couldn't deal with his face interrogating me from out of the paper, and now the hour had drawn where I would be forced to deal with it in reality. I didn't know if I was going to be interrogated, or even thrown into a trap. He said that he could call the police at any time. He would have grounds. Me being there could be grounds, it would be like the one show on television. "To Catch A Predator." But that's not what I was. I wasn't designing maliciously on Frank. I just wanted to look at him. I'd daydream of touching him for hours and hours, of running my hands all over him, but I never would. I wasn't going to spoil Frank with my impurities. He was the blank piece of paper that all the charcoal staining my hands could never touch.

 

I drove over bundled up in my coat, sweating heavily despite leaving the heater off. My hands were frozen, but my t-shirt stuck to me with sweat. I was chewing the insides of my cheeks, panicking to the second that I pulled my car into the spot I had been using, walking the distance to his house. I slipped on the ice several times, but I didn't fall. I found myself briefly praying for a broken arm, for a snapped something that would get me out of this situation. At the same time, though, I dreaded it. Seeing Frank was the pool of addiction building up in my guts, and I found I was shaking more from anticipation than fear. I shuffled through the lingering snow and grass by the side of the house, crouching down to my knees and crawling along. The knees of my pants were soaked at once, and my hands were chilled even further. Frozen. 

 

I scooted closer to the window, tentatively peeking into his window, nose close to the glass. The one dim light was on, but the television was shut off. I didn't see Frank. My guts sank as I was forced to wonder if he was even in the room at all. But then my face fell forward, and I nearly tumbled down into his room. I heard a snort of laughter as I steadied myself, blinking at the now less-blurred sight of his room.

 

"You gonna come in?" I heard Frank, in between laughter. But I couldn't see him.

 

I shifted in the snow, kicking bits of it into Frank's room as I maneuvered to turn, get my feet through the window and then lower the rest of me down through it. I dangled before I found footing, and let myself slide down, fingers letting go of the grass outside as I allowed myself to tumble in. But my footing soon broke, and I heard Frank swear as I frantically grabbed to the windowsill, holding on for dear life.

 

" _Fuck_ you're fat!" he hissed as he grabbed me by the knees, and I could hear the straining in his voice as he helped lower me down, down onto the edge of a desk. "Almost fucking broke it, holy shit."

 

"Sorry." I whimpered. He was standing before me, hands on hips and shoving the hair out of his eyes as he panted. He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue boxer briefs. Boxer briefs. Underwear. Only underwear. I felt the spit slide down my throat as I swallowed, gaping at him as I gripped the corners of his desk.

 

"Move, jesus christ." I got up to stand awkwardly to the side as he climbed up on the desk to pull the window tight again. He then stomped past me to check the door to his bedroom. He jiggled the handle. It was locked.While he did this, I looked around his room. It was plain. Completely unremarkable. The walls were white, the carpeting gray, the bedspread rumpled and navy with gray sheets. The TV was in a plain black entertainment stand, and a standing lamp was in the corner. His desk, the one I had just gotten off of, had been cleared off. I noticed a large pile of papers loaded underneath the desk, the rolling chair. They had been put there carelessly--quickly, I assumed. The bookshelf was nearly empty, and the few books that were on it looked as if they hadn't been touched. The closet door was shut. It was the  drabbest room that I had ever set foot in, and it was completely uninformative as to the nature of the gorgeous, gorgeous boy inhabiting it.

 

He was inhabiting the bed now, to be specific. He was laid out across it, legs spread open while he rested his arms behind his head. First two, then one arm. He covered his mouth with a hand as he yawned, then let it rest on his chest. He sketched circles on himself as he blinked up, bored at the ceiling, and then I saw his hand slowly creep downwards. Following a straight, steady trail to his boxers, he took the elastic edge between his fingers and tugged it up, down. He fondled it in his fingertips, and I saw the bulge in his pants raise just so slightly. I saw it. I knew what it was, I had seen it before, and now it was _here_. Right in front of me. I stood there frozen, my teeth chattering. He looked from the ceiling to me, smiling.

 

"What's wrong?"

 

"I....I....um...."

 

"You wanted to watch, didn't you? Isn't that why you were by my window that night?" He tugged the waistband down a little bit, blinking up at me. His mouth spread wider. I couldn't respond. "You wanna see me touch myself?" he asked again, sliding his hand down the front of his underwear to squeeze at himself. I saw his hand move beneath the fabric, and felt myself swallowing again. I averted my eyes, staring down at the carpet instead of Frank. I couldn't look at him. Not like this.

 

"You're gonna ignore me?" I heard him demand. I looked back up at him, and his hand was stopped where it had been moving before. "Cmon, you came over. Isn't this what you wanted?" 

 

He was frowning, and there was an edge in his voice. I was silent, shaky. I felt as if my sickness from before was coming back.

 

"Well?"

 

"I...I, um..."

 

"Cmon. Pay attention to me." he said before he pushed himself up on his pillows more, almost upright as he let his head roll onto the shoulder of the arm that wasn't going to work beneath his shorts. His lashes were covering his irises, and his mouth was starting to fall open as he slowly moved his hands around. I could see the outline of his knuckles and the...the other, both trapped under blue. I shoved my hands in my pockets and wriggled, looking around when I noticed his eyes were shut. I saw the desk chair, and made to sit in it quickly, facing his bed. I couldn't afford to have him catch me ignoring him. I also couldn't keep up standing, not with the way my blood was shifting around right now.

 

He noticed me staring at him, for it was all I could do. I had to. This seemed to please him though, because he arched his back up, sitting straighter and shoving out his chest. His shorts got tugged down lower as he racked his shirt up, sliding a hand up underneath it to splay across his chest. I could see a patch of pubic hair. "Want me to take my clothes off?" he asked, batting his eyes at me and smiling. His voice had changed again, that low taunt he had somehow mastered at fifteen years old. I couldn't respond, I just felt my mouth flop open.

 

He rolled his eyes at me, pulling his hand out of his shirt again and bracing it back on the sheets. "Whatever. God, you're weird...god, uh..." His criticism of me turned into the noises of his action, and I heard his breath hitch up and gasp. My hands were glued to his knees, even though my eyes were practically watery with the strain I was keeping them open with--a strain to detract from the straining in my pants. Frank's mouth was tumbling open, and I had seen him enough those two days before to know he was getting close to finish.

 

Frank was kicking and thrashing, pulling his knees up closer to his chest as he slid down the bed, free hand clenching in the sheets. He was making these broken, whimpering little sounds, and his hand was beating hard in his shorts. There was a damp patch in his pants, and then he was clapping a hand over his mouth to mute a long whimper as that patch spread and darkened in seconds. He bucked up and up, back arching and face clenching up as he rode out the few seconds of it. And then he was calm, and pulling his hand out of his pants, wiping it on the already soiled fabric of his boxers. And then blinking up at me.

 

"Good?" he asked, no longer seductive, just slow and lazy. That was how his eyes blinked up at me, nestled now in the pillows he had fallen back into. I nodded, squeezing my legs together. I would normally come in my pants after watching him, but I had held out. And it hurt. He noticed, and laughed at me. "Looks like it was good," he giggled, rolling over on his side and curling his legs up to his chest. He hugged a pillow and beamed up at me. "Are you gonna jerk off, too?"

 

"I...c-can I?"

 

He snorted. "Not in my room!" he said before bursting into another tizzy of laughter. My cheeks burned and I looked down at myself in shame, the evidence right there to betray me. 

 

"Sorry." I mumbled.

 

"I don't want your weird freak jizz on my carpet." he said, pushing himself up on the pillow to look at me, rolling on his stomach and kicking his heels back and forth. "So. You got what your weird ass wanted. Where's my present, huh?"

 

"P-present?"

 

"The booooze, dumbo. Remember? You better have not fuckin' forgot." he said, and then he was frowning at me. This was the part I had been dreading. This was when it went downhill.

 

"I--I couldn't get any...I'm...I'm really sorry....um..."

 

Frank just sighed, pushing himself up and crawling off of the bed to stand in front of me. His hands were on his hips again, and I kept my gaze down as he looked me up and down. He was so small, but I was on a chair and he had a million pounds of confidence to beat down the pounds of pathetic pudge that I'd amassed in my life. "Whatever. How much money do you have on you?"

 

I jerked my head up to look at him, then down again, to dig in my pocket and pull out the battered old wallet I had gotten my sophomore year of high school. It had an anime character on the cover. I tried to shield it with my hand, but Frank saw and started laughing again. "Holy _shit_ you're a loser," I heard him laugh. 

 

"I, um...thirty-two. I've got thirty-two dollars on me."

 

"That's it?"

 

"Yeah, um...that's all I have...payday isn't for a while..." I mumbled. I'd had forty-two earlier, but ten had gone to pay for Frank's meal.

 

"Well, I guess it'll do." he sighed again, holding out his hand expectantly. I looked up at him. "Well?" he pushed again, tapping his sock foot on the thin carpeting.

 

"Oh! Oh, um..h-here." I set the bills into Frank's hand shakily, and he clenched them up in his fist as soon as I set the last one down. He raised his eyebrows a little at the wad of green in his hand, then smiled and put it into his backpack. "Alright, sweet. You can go now."

 

"I--I, what?"

 

"Leave, duh. What did you want? A sleepover? Dude, no. Go home. You got what you wanted."

 

"B-but...oh, um....um, that's it?"

 

"Jesus, what else do you want?" Frank snapped. He had just finished yawning, and he looked rumpled and annoyed now. "I jerked off for you. I'm not...helping you with your own shit. Go home. I'm tired."

 

The seductive Frank, the inviting Frank, even the appeasable Frank from before was gone. This Frank was just angry, and I couldn't deal with that. "O-ok." I said, folding up my wallet again and shuffling awkwardly to my feet. "D-do I...the window...?"

 

"Yeah, yeah. I'll get you the stepstool. So your fat ass doesn't fuckin' break my desk."

 

He was gone for a minute, unlocking the door and stepping out, and then he was back, ladder in hand. He pushed the desk aside, climbing on the stool himself to unlock the window and then stepping aside. I walked over to it, climbing up and squeezing out of the tiny opening. I was crawling in the grass again and I leaned back in the window to tell him goodbye, goodnight, but he had already shut the window again by the time I had gotten my footing on hands and knees outside. I squinted inside, trying to find him so I could wave, but then the light in his room went off and I was left alone, cold and stupid in the snow.


	3. Chapter 3

I was cold and stupid in my car after that, panting and whimpering as I touched myself fast and desperate. I came fast, and without much aplomb. It was more embarrassing than anything else, especially since I didn't have any paper towels to clean up the mess with. I did the best I could with a spare hoodie that I found in the car. I drove home, crawled back down to the basement, and wrapped myself up in blankets, staring bug-eyed at the wall and trying to make sense of what had just happened. Frank had invited me, then....performed for me. Was that even the word? I was replaying it over and over in my head, but I still couldn't make sense of it. It didn't make sense for Frank to do any of what he had done.

 

I sat up in bed, then. I needed to draw. I needed to sketch out his room, for one, and lay down the habitat, the scenery, the background for any future drawings of Frank in his room. It was an important point to record. And then I was drawing out legs, smooth, slender legs that were blank to the thigh. And then blue. On the other side of the paper, a torso. It looked like a science fiction monster, with the lumps I was compiling underneath the t-shirt. But those were nothing. They were just lumps of knuckles through fabric. A matter of shading.

 

Then a million heads and necks filled the page, tipped up and dipped down at different angles.There was Frank's head lolling forward, the jaw hanging open. There was his head tipped, straining backwards, with his mouth clenching shut. There was the hand over his mouth, the one he had slapped there when he came. His head had been falling on either his left shoulder or his right, alternatively, throughout the "show" he'd given for me. I shivered again. My room was cold, but I quickly warmed myself up by more desperate fiddling around under my covers after I turned the lights off to try and sleep. I couldn't stop thinking about what I had seen.

 

\-----

 

I went to work the next day, hoping that Frank was going to invite me over again that night. But he didn't. He did show up, and I charged his meal on my debit card--as I was now of course out of cash. I looked up at him, even managed to smile at him. I asked him how he was, and he told me he was fine. But then he just picked up his food and left. He didn't even stick around to eat it in the store like he normally did, he just picked everything up in his hands and walked away. He was simply gone, without another hint of word or reason. After yesterday, after everything that had conspired, it was as if if hadn't happened at all.

 

The drive home was shaky, and I nearly veered off and hit a stop sign. I wasn't good to drive right now, especially not with the bad weather that was beginning to set in after my shift ended. I tried to draw him again, and fortunately I succeeded. I filled up ten pages of my sketchbook with the same "case study" drawings as last night. My previous anxiety of drawing him in the first place had transformed into anxiety of forgetting what I had seen. I had to record, and I cursed at myself for not watching him more closely.

 

I had been so concerned with keeping up appearances, and with not looking at him too much. I had worried last night about offending him with my gaze, offending him with a stare he had wanted in the first place. He wanted me to look, and it was now a double failure that I hadn't. I had probably let him down by not looking enough, and that was why he hadn't asked me again. And I had wound up letting myself down by not being able to take in enough detail to remember. The event had evaded permanence in my mind. 

 

As the minutes of the night ticked on, my lines became more and more clumsy. I stopped being able to render him at all, so I closed my sketchbook, rolled over and tried to sleep. Of course, I had dream after dream of him. Of course, I woke up hard and sweaty every single time. But I just rolled over and shut my eyes each time. I couldn't touch myself. Not after my failure to acknowledge the gift Frank had given me, my failure to do anything. I didn't have a single right to go after myself.

 

\------

 

The day after that, he stopped in again. He came at his usual time, but he did not take his usual order. Despite the cold, he ordered an iced coffee. I prepared him one with a lot of chocolate and caramel topping, and he took a long time loitering at the counter. He didn't speak to me, and I was too shy to ask him anything. I was too ashamed. He made a point to stare at me, though. Frank was making a point to slowly drag his fingers through the condensation on the cup, turning them wet and pink with cold. He dawdled in drawing patterns all over the plastic, and I could see all of his delicate tendons flexing on his hands. 

 

I flushed and nearly dropped the cleaning rag I was working with when I remembered how his hands had looked the other night. How I had seen that hand, the one wrapped around the cup right now, wrapped around himself. I remembered the way those thin and bony knuckles had been obscured and kept tight to his groin under blue, blue cotton. I squeezed the blue rag in my hand hard, my nails going around and through it and cutting into my palm.

 

As I scrambled to my feet, he just kept blinking at me. I was flustered, he was slow. When he pulled back from the straw, a trickle of flavored coffee was left running down the side. He noticed, and leaned back in to lick it. But when he did, he started at the bottom of the straw, near the opening in the lid. He licked around and under the rim of the lid, picking up the remnants of whipped cream, and then slowly dragged his tongue up the length of the straw, pulling back again to delicately lick up the drop that had been left behind in the first place. 

 

But then he was back to slurping on the straw recklessly. Then he was sucking the last of the liquid puddle that was stuck between the ice at the bottom. Then he was throwing the cup away and walking out of the restaurant. And that whole time he had been looking at me. That whole time, he didn't remove his eyes. Not once. Not until he was out the door without a goodbye. I cast my eyes down in shame again. I'd only noticed him when I took a tiny chance to look up. He'd been able to look the whole time. But I had failed to match him. Again.

 

\-------

 

On the third day, on the fourth day, on the fifth day, all of these things kept happening. The same drink every day, the same "oral fixation" he had seemed to develop. I had heard the phrase dropped in my forgotten English class from last semester, and I now found it applicable. He became briefly ridiculous, with the way he licked at it. He became even more vicious with the way he looked at me, the way he stared and blinked. Every day I ducked my head, directed my attention to some task, forced myself to look at something that wasn't the pink tongue constantly darting in and out of his mouth.

 

\-------

 

It was the eighth day, with a weekend in between, that things finally snapped. It was the day that my neck snapped up and my eyes started staring back. Our fingertips brushed when I handed him yet another iced coffee, and we both stopped. We were holding on to each other, the cup linking us, and we both stared. Mine was hesitant, and his was sharp. His mouth twisted into a smile, and then he yanked the cup out of my hand so it was set in his possession alone. He lifted off the plastic lid and dipped his face to the rim of the cup, lapping up the cream on top. I watched him as he did, as the white smeared across his mouth. 

 

As he licked all the topping out of the cup, his eyes were downcast. I was the only one staring. But then he finished, and his eyes were on me again as he licked the cream off of his mouth, pink tongue making way for red lips again. He went slowly, delicately, and wiped away the excess specks and spit with the back of his hand. He was grinning now, and he tipped the straw into his mouth again, sucking coffee up into his cheeks. He rocked back and forth on his heels, and I saw his hips swish on the other side of the counter. His eyebrows were raised, and he was blinking at me. He looked expectant.

 

"Is...is it um, okay?" I asked, desperate for something, anything to say.

 

He nodded, and took in another slurp. Then his hips swished and swiveled all the way around, and he was walking across the tile floor, walking to the exit like he always did too soon lately.

 

"Bye, Gerarrrrd." he said, drawling out my name as he pulled open the door. He smiled at me, and waited for me to return it before he left. I did, almost feeling the need to lift up my hands and tug on my cheeks. My face was too wound up with nerves to really pull a decent smile. But he was happy with my effort, happy enough to turn back around and leave.

 

I sank onto the counter, for the first time in my life feeling overwhelmed by the general quiet that came with working in an unpopular deli.

 

I hadn't a single clue what Frank wanted anymore.

 


	4. Chapter 4

All of the late nights that I was spending mooning over Frank were catching up to me, and dragging myself out of bed in the morning was becoming more and more difficult. So, I tended not to. I would slam on the clock, sleep through classes, spend all of my lecture time, work time, and study time passed out in the sweaty sheets of my creaky twin bed. But when I rolled over to see the clock was getting close to the time my shift began in the afternoon, I was out, I was going, and I was gone. I had never arrived to work late, not a single day. Frank's times varied, but he had been coming consistently day after day. If I were to mark him down on an attendance sheet, he'd be receiving a one hundred percent at this point in time. Of course, as aforementioned, mine was scattered at best.

 

The first day in I don't know how many that I stumbled into class, I was handed a letter and shoved down to the community college academic office. My attendance was becoming a "concern." I was failing or scraping a D in all of my classes. I had missed test days, I was failing to turn in projects, I was neglecting all assigned coursework, I was being put on "academic probation." My teachers had turned in lists, apparently, of everything I was missing. I had mandatory conferences with each one today, and I was expected to be there.

 

"B-but I have...."

 

"Mr.Way, if you intend on staying enrolled in this school, you do not _have_ anything except some appointments to attend this afternoon."

 

\-----

 

So I missed work, an absence without any sort of leave or given notification. Half of my time was spent wandering around campus, trying to remember where my classes were located in the first place, trying to find offices of professors beyond that. I peeked my head into doorways, found condescending faces that told me I was in the wrong place. Once I made it to where I was actually supposed to be, the new faces there did not soften. I had to look down at my schedule to remember what I was taking in the first place, and a couple of the professors had to check their rosters to even realize I was one of their students.

 

My art history teacher was particularly scornful. I had missed one of the biggest tests of the semester, and done an--I quote--"abysmal" job on the previous test, as well as the quizzes. She blasted me on how obvious it was that I hadn't studied, and rambled for ages and ages about how sloppy my essays were, how obvious my "bullsh--blathering" was. After she had subsided her raging, she pushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear and crossed her legs, leaning across the desk and asking me in a lower voice if I had any sort of learning disability that impeded me from retaining information. I didn't. I heard her mutter that I "may as well". 

 

At the end of it, she just sighed and pushed an outline, a timetable of make-up work that I needed to complete by a certain date if I expected to remain enrolled in the class. This was what happened in most of my other classes, too. I had completely forgotten about intro to ceramics and intro to graphic design. They were required for the art program, but I was too preoccupied with drawing to bother thinking about them. Not to mention my hands were clumsy and I was terrible with computers.

 

Even in my drawing class, I was behind. My teacher this semester was a lot less enthusiastic about my documentation of Frank than my professor from last semester had been. Not to mention, I was drawing less and less as a whole. I was too busy actually dealing with Frank to try and work on projects devoted to him. When I was actually seeing him late at night, through a window, across a counter, or otherwise, the need for me to recreate him on a canvas at home lessened.

 

Aside from that, my hands were too busy fumbling around in my pajama pants at two in the morning to attempt art. I had put away the paint in favor of staining my sheets with other materials. I was thinking of Frank just as much as I had before, certainly. I was never not thinking about him. The problem was, my own individual meditations and dedications on his form had stopped being so productive.

 

My drawing teacher asked who "the boy" I always drew was. I frowned at that. Frank wasn't just a boy, he was far more special than that. She told me my rendering of him was excellent, that I had a knack for portraits, but "couldn't I try another model?" I also needed to complete a long list of other assignment. Still lives, landscapes, figure drawings, and all of the things that were decidedly not Frank and decidedly not of interest to me. I just nodded and walked out.

 

Before I did walk out, she told me that perhaps I ought to look for older models, as drawing children wasn't really representative of the entire spectrum of human age. That made the hairs on my neck bristle and my hands twitch. Frank wasn't a child. Children didn't do what he did. But I couldn't throw that piece of information back at her, and I didn't want to. What I had seen of Frank was for me. Only me.

 

It wasn't just the obvious act from however long, too long ago. It wasn't him outright touching himself for me, but it was everything besides that, too. It was the way he blinked, the way he spoke, the way he dripped across the counter. Children didn't do that. Whatever Frank's biological age may be, everything else about him, everything besides the year

on his birth certificate, that was what really defined his age.

 

\------

 

I was late to work, held up by all of the conferences, and I glanced at the clock once I got behind the counter. There were six hours left in my shift. Not a good thing, given all of the make up assignments I had to complete. All menial work, slave labor, nothing artistic about it at all. It was incredibly frustrating to think about. My professors, they simply didn't understand. I had to work to see Frank, Frank was at my work, and aside from my actual "work", as in my job, all of my artwork was centered around Frank. Frank, Frank, and only Frank. He was the apex of my life for a reason.

 

That center came strolling in as usual, and my attention snapped to him instantly. My shoulders turned, my hips turned, and my neck nearly snapped off with how fast I turned it to see him. He wasn't after his usual order, he even refused it when I began to prepare it for him. He just stared at me, smirking. I asked him if he would like something else to eat, to drink, a muffin, a bagel, anything, and he just shook his head every time. He didn't stop smirking.

 

"W-well, uh, um, w-what do you, what do you want?"

 

"You."

 

"M-me?"

 

"Mom and Dad are out tonight. You wanna come over?"

 

"I-I..."

 

"You're not busy, are you?" he asked me, snorting. He covered his mouth with his gloved hand as his smile widened across his face. "You got big _plans_?" 

 

"N-no, um...." I did have homework, but I wasn't about to hold that in priority over the promise of time spent with Frank. Absolutely not. It would serve them right, I thought. Give me whatever stupid stuff they wanted, but Frank would always top it all. Frank even wanted to be on top. It was as if he could sense the new deviations in my timetable, and was making an effort to reassert himself as a result.

 

"Good. Then I'll see you. Ok?"

 

"Um, okay."

 

And then he left, and I stood at my post behind the counter for too many more hours, too many more minutes. I hated being at work after Frank left every day. It lost all of its excitement, all of its promise. I just picked at the skin around my nails and took orders halfheartedly, passing the time by daydreaming about what might happen with Frank tonight. If it were to follow the pattern of last time, it would result in another one of Frank's....shows. My stomach flipped at the thought and I quickly stared at the soggy tomatoes behind the counter to drive out those thoughts. I couldn't be getting excited at work.

 

I went home around eight, and Frank had directed me to come over around nine. It only left me enough time to put on a clean pair of jeans--relatively clean, at least. I sat down on my bed and bent over to carefully tie my sneakers, and I even went upstairs to brush my teeth. There were leftovers from dinner in the fridge for me, but I didn't go after them. I wasn't going to brush my teeth again after eating. Even with only a half hour to kill, the minutes nevertheless dragged on and on.

 

I got to his house and knocked at his basement window as I had before, and he cracked it open angrily as he snapped at me to "go around to the front, dumbass." He opened the front door for me, and I stepped in shyly into his front hall. I realized that I had never been in the greater part of Frank's house before, just Frank's sparsely decorated bedroom. The rest of his house was just as bland as his bedroom. The living room furniture was inoffensive, and looked as if it had come straight out of a showroom. As I followed Frank into the kitchen, I noticed that there were no pictures on the walls, no decorative house plants, nothing at all.

 

"Sit down, I guess." he said, poking around in his refrigerator. I delicately perched on the edge of one of the stools against Frank's breakfast bar. He pulled milk out, and made himself a bowl of cereal. I frowned. It was late for cereal. He  noticed this, and frowned back at me. 

 

"What, you hungry?" he asked, shoving an oversized spoonful of cereal into his mouth. I shook my head, watching him chew. A little bit of milk dribbled down his chin. I wanted to lick it up, and as soon as that thought crossed my mind I quickly sat up straighter, crossing my legs and squeezing my hands together tight in my lap. He raised his eyebrows at me, and I bit my lip and looked down at the linoleum. He continued to eat, making a lot of sloppy sounds. He chewed with his mouth open. I could see the slick interior of his mouth, made wetter by the milk. 

 

He finished quickly, and dumped the bowl and spoon in his sink without washing them off. Then he waddled back into the living room. I was on my feet fast, following him close behind and standing awkwardly in front of him on the rug after he tumbled into one of the plain blue armchairs in his living room. There was a television, but it was turned off.

 

"Okay. So. What's up?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and looking up at me expectantly.

 

"W-what?"

 

"With you. Just, what's up, period. Why are you like, here? Why do you do all this shit?"

 

"W-what kind of...um, well I'm here because...because you invited me, um...w-we're....we're friends?"

 

"Uh..."

 

"I-I mean, we're sort of friends. We um, talk to each other and stuff."

 

"Do your other friends jerk off for you?"

 

"I-I...n-no, I don't, um...."

 

"Don't what?"

 

"I don't um...I don't, I don't see a lot of other, um...people."

 

"Oh."

 

"Sorry."

 

"For what?"

 

"I don't...I don't know, um....sorry...sorry, um..." I was looking around his living room, picking even harder at my hands. He was just staring at me, doing that squint he always did when we were engaged in conversation. "Are you um, gonna do the thing again today?"

 

"What thing?"

 

"Th-the thing. That you did, um, last time, um...."

 

"Is that all you came over for?"

 

"No! No, I was just...wondering, I guess...I shouldn't have said anything, um....crap, I'm sorry, I...."

 

"Dude, Gerald...I..."

 

"Gerard."

 

"What?"

 

"It..it's Gerard, not Gerald...um..."

 

"Oh. Sorry."

 

"I-it's okay."

 

"Okay. Gerard."

 

"Yes?"

 

"Calm down, shit. God. You're so fuckin' like...eager. It's weird."

 

"O-oh. Like...like bad?"

 

"Not...bad, it's just....you're really weird, dude."

 

"Oh."

 

"So are you gonna tell me what's up?"

 

"I don't really...I don't know. I, um...I just....I..." I was out of words. I didn't have a way to explain to Frank what I meant, and everything that I saw in him and about him. I couldn't tell him about how perfect he was as a subject, because that word, "subject", it was sure to just cheapen his existence. To even offend him. I couldn't tell him about how funny he made me feel, and how much I thought about him, and how everything I did was for him.

 

In high school, once, one of the girls I had always drawn had confronted me. She asked why I always stared at her, why I was always there whenever she turned around. I had been lost for words, and mouthed silent words at her. I was a fish until I picked up my heels and ran away. Frank, though. I couldn't run from Frank. His eyes held me in place, held me tight. I was anchored tight and close to the floor. I wanted to tell him, I did. But I couldn't. Not now.

 

"You're...you're....um...."

 

"What?"

 

"I just...you're um...you're really, um...cool?" I scraped my brain for slang, and winced as soon as I said it. Frank wasn't cool. He was perfect. There was a pronounced difference. Frank wasn't an MTV adjective, he wasn't a billboard advertisement. And he certainly wasn't cool in the literal sense of the world. All Frank did was make me hot, make me sweaty and flushed, and I bet he'd scald me if I touched him right now. Frank sighed heavily on the couch, picking up his hands and covering his face with them. He slide them down, making his eyes grotesque for a few brief seconds before he just resumed to blinking at me.

 

"I really, really don't get you. Do you wanna fuck me? Is that it?"

 

"N-no! No, I don't...no!" 

 

"Then _what_. What do you _want_ , dude. Tell me."

 

"I--I don't know, um...I just...I like...seeing you?"

 

"Naked? Touching myself?"

 

"N-no...I mean, I mean I do but....also regular? Like you...you not doing those things is...is um, nice. You're nice. I-I like you!" I sputtered out. Words weren't working for me at all.

 

"You like me?"

 

"Um, y-yeah."

 

"Like you want to be my _boyfriend_?"

 

"W-well....I, I...I don't....um..."

 

I was cut off in the middle of my sentence by Frank leaping up and out of his reclined position, staring stiff and rigid outside the living room window. "Shit." 

 

"What? What's wrong?"

 

"Mom and Dad. They're home early. Fuck, fuck, c'mon."

 

Frank bolted past me down the stairs to his basement bedroom, and I ran after him. I almost tripped on the area rug in his hallway, and he hissed a "come on, asshole, hurry up!" at me. He was ripping at his basement window by the time I caught up to him, and I had the sense to grab the folding chair propped up against the wall by the door. He urged me out, out, out, and shut the window behind me before I had the chance to tell him goodbye. He hadn't said anything except out, out, out, and I really, really hoped that he hadn't been making a permanent comment.

 

I didn't want to be out of Frank's life, I wanted to wiggle farther in. It seemed like that's where things were going at the moment, but I couldn't be sure. I was certainly doing a better job of pushing things back than advancing them forward.


	5. Chapter 5

I didn't sleep that night, but there was nothing new about that. I could've stayed up until dawn scribbling away at my stack of late work, but I couldn't. I was too caught up in reliving scenes from hours ago. The thing I wondered most was what Frank's parents looked like. Did they have his eyes, his hair? Did whatever was sprouting out of their heads carry the same tint as Frank's, or had it burned out to gray? Frank was so young, I realized. He was really, really young. He was fresh and ripe, those were two decent words. I didn't want to liken him to a fruit, but it was true enough to every extent.

He clearly didn't have the closest relationship with his parents. Not based on his living room. It was too bare to merit a family. From what I had seen, he didn't have any siblings either. That was okay. If there was a void in Frank's life, I could fill it. I'd come over whenever he needed. I would be the best company he'd ever want for. I'd draw him whatever he wanted. If he had me over, he could break all the mirrors in his house. He wouldn't need them, not with me around. If he ever wanted to know what he looked like, I could just draw him. It might be a little biased, but it wouldn't be so far off. He always looked so good.

Saying I didn't work on any of my projects was the truth. I didn't bother to pick up any of my work. That wasn't to say I didn't draw, though. I was working on filling up scenes and details from earlier. I was focusing on Frank's hands, the way they had cupped the oversized bowl, the spoon. There was a strange way that he gripped the spoon, and I was stuck trying to render the exact curve of his fingers for hours. I fell asleep with my pencil in my hand, and overslept. It didn't matter. I hadn't planned on going to class today anyway. I wasn't penalized for absences. I could just say that I was working on projects. It wasn't true, but I was still in the process of researching my biggest project. Perhaps that qualified it to be a half-truth.

Frank didn't say anything about the previous night when he came in to the store. The weather was bad, not so much snow as it was brutal, bone slicing wind. So he waited around until my shift ended, and then he tagged along with me out to my car. Frank didn't cease to tease me the whole duration of my shift, though. He had been staring at me incessantly, and it made me wish that I had washed my hair. I had washed it in the past week, at least. And there had been a collection of snow in it earlier, before it melted. That counted as a rinse, at least. It could be dirtier. I rushed back to clock out as soon as possible, and he was at my side before I had even shoved one arm into my coat. He mentioned that it had been a little while since he'd had a smoke. I didn't fail to mention that I had been paid recently, and he didn't fail to beam at me while we were walking out to my car. 

"Well, let's go to the convenience store!" he said, hopping in the passenger seat and bouncing out of his seat belt. I had told him to buckle up. He wouldn't have done so if I hadn't reminded him. I told him we could, and I backed out of the space. The roads were turning dangerously icy, and it was blowing so bad outside that it was difficult to see. I was glad that I had my car. I wouldn't want Frank walking home in this. It took ten minutes in the storm to make it over to the convenience store, and I parked as close to the entrance as possible. I had barely put the car into park before Frank had picked up my backpack, and began to rummage through it. 

"Wait, Frank, Frank stop--" 

It was too late, though. Frank's face had drained of color, and he was staring at the piece of paper he had pulled out from my pack. It was one of my more recent drawings, and however crumpled and smudged it was, it was undeniably Frank. It wasn't explicit. It wasn't so explicit. Frank was just sitting there. It was a drawing of him in profile. Frank stared at it more, spreading it out to look at it better. I was helpless to speak. I couldn't yank it out of his hands, I couldn't move. Frank set that piece of paper on his lap, then looked through the bag more. His hands moved slowly, carefully, and his hair fell in front of his face and covered his expression. He pulled out single pieces of paper, looking at them briefly before setting them on his knee on top of the first one he had found.

It wasn't long before he found my sketchbook. He tore open the cover, and I almost cringed. None of the pages tore, but he was flipping through them fast enough to make me worry. His mouth was hanging open, and the pace at which he was turning the pages was slowing down. He lingered on one page, running his fingers over the paper, and then slowly turned it to the next. He grabbed the sketchbook by its sides and pulled it up in front of his face. 

"Jesus Christ." he muttered, turning to the next page. Frank had reached that part of my sketchbook. The part where it ceased to be so innocent, where all of my closer watching of him had finally paid off. It was Frank undressed, partially dressed, explicit in every way. His mouth was hanging open in the drawings, skewed to the side, tongue lolling in ecstasy. The Frank beside me, his mouth had shut. A firm, unyielding line ran across his face.

"Frank....Frank, I--"

"You...you draw me?" Frank asked, incredulously. He was still staring at the page in front of him. It was one of my most recent drawings, from the other night. One of the nights Frank had invited me over. It had the t-shirt ridden up, the shadows in his boxers where the curve of his hand interfered. "That's...you fucking draw me."

"I--w-well, yes, um..."

"How long?" he asked, snapping the sketchbook shut and dropping it in his lap. He looked at me, then down at the book again, and shoved it off of his lap. It skidded off his thighs, past his knees, and dropped down into the pile of trash under my passenger seat. The book fell somewhere around his sneakers, somewhere where I couldn't see. 

"It...it hasn't...well...."

"Holy shit." Frank said, almost a whisper. "Creepy fucker. Every time I fucking saw you. Since school started. Holy fucking shit."

I didn't respond. My hands were shaking and I couldn't look at Frank. I was staring at the wheel of my car, eyes running over the logo on it over, over, over again. I noticed the airbag symbol. Deploy in case of emergency. It should be deploying now, oh god, it should be deploying now.

"You've been doing this for months."

I felt myself shaking harder in my seat. When I parked, I had turned off the car, stopped the heat. It might just be the cold. I could see the snow blowing around outside. It was fast and violent with the wind.

"You have, haven't you? Tell me."

I nodded, and I heard Frank sink back into the seat, exhaling as his back hit the fabric. "Holy shit," I heard him whisper again. "Holy fucking shit."

We sat there in silence, me shaking still. I didn't look at Frank. I couldn't look at Frank. My knees knocked together, and my hands were rattling all over the place. I felt heat building up in my chest, in my face, and I bit hard on my lip. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, but I couldn't cry. That would be too much. Right now, it would be far too much.

"Gerard." Frank said after a while. He broke the silence abruptly, and I heard my car seat creak as he shifted his weight. "Gerard, hey. You got paid, right?"

"Y-yeah. Yeah, I g-g-got paid."

"Give me twenty."

I pushed myself up immediately, smacking my head against my side window as I dug in my back pants pocket for my wallet. There was a twenty dollar bill in my hands fast, I wasn't even so sure I had pulled it out on my own. Not with how speedy it had gotten there. I held it out to Frank, shaky, and he snatched it out of my hand. His gloved fingers grazed my bare hand, and a burst of cold air blew through my car as he opened the door, got out, slammed it shut. I sank down in my seat, alone now, and the tears didn't hold themselves back. I covered my face with my hands, smearing them with drool as my mouth wobbled open, sniffling and wailing. Frank had just left. He had found me out and then he had left. That was it. This was over now.

I had never even had any bad intentions. I had just wanted to draw him. It wasn't my fault that I had wound up wanting to draw all of him. There was a lot more than just his face. It was normal to be curious. It was normal to want to create a cohesive picture. I hadn't meant to do anything wrong. I couldn't even pick up my sketchbook from where Frank had dropped it. I was horrendously ashamed. I couldn't look at what I had made. After Frank had seen the drawings, the sanctity of them was ruined. The entire construct of Frank, the secrecy surrounding his regular existence and my rendering of existence had disintegrated. 

I had ruined it. I should have left my materials at home. No, no, I never should have started to speak to Frank to begin with. It was impossible to salvage things now, not now that he had seen. He knew I was in love with him. I wasn't even so in love with him. Yes, I was. No, I wasn't. I couldn't even identify the feeling. Frank was beyond explanation, as usual. All I knew was that I needed to be around him to be okay at all. And now he was gone, disappeared into a convenience store. I was just sitting in case he came back. If he came back. Maybe he would come back.

Sitting alone in my car, shivering and sucking on the tips of my fingers, chewing on them and sniffling, the door opened again. I kept my stare dead-set on the windshield. It had started to ice over. I was freezing cold, and my face was sticky with dried tears. I felt another gust of cold, a tapping on my shoulder. It wasn't Frank. Frank couldn't have come back. Frank had left. He had probably walked home, preferring the cold to me. I couldn't blame him. I was favoring the cold right now, too. Freezing to death seemed like the greatest option at the moment.

"Hey. Gerard. Come on, wake up." Frank said, continuing to bat at my shoulder. "I got you some Twinkies. Here, eat 'em." 

He tossed the snack cakes into my lap and I started bawling again, a great big wrenching sob that tumbled out of my face and into my hands.

"Gerard, Gerard, holy shit....calm down, dude. It's not a big deal."

"M's-s-s--sorry!" I cried, trying to stop, to calm down. I didn't succeed.

"Gerard. Seriously. Stop it. Come on, calm down. Here....fucking...ugh, calm down." Frank's hand patted my shoulder, squeezing it. "Stop crying, it's fucking....just stop."

I heaved in great gasps of air, blubbering and choking on my own breaths. Frank continued to pat me, and eventually I stopped hyperventilating. I was able to tumble down into my shoulders, to slouch and start to breathe again.

"Okay. There. Are you okay?"

I nodded. 

"I'm not mad, you know."

"Y-you're not?"

"I'm not."

"A-a-are you sure. I-I know it's, it's w-w-w-weird, and you--you probably, h-ha-hate me, and I--I--" I started to breathe faster again, the panic kicking in.

"Gerard, shush. Calm down. It's...well, it's fucking weird. But I'm not talking to you about it. Okay? It didn't happen."

"Wh-wha?"

"It didn't happen. I didn't look in your...book, or whatever. I didn't see anything. Drive me home."

"Y-you want me, t-to..."

"Gerard, fucking drive me home, holy shit. Stop crying. It's not a fucking big deal." Frank snapped, buckling in his seat belt. "It's getting late. I want to go home."

I tried to nod, and started up the car. I backed out, slowly, cranking the heat to blast away some of the ice. The drive to Frank's house took far longer than usual, due to the storm. I chugged along on the roads, eventually making it to park in front of Frank's house. He hadn't said anything on the ride home, just lit up a cigarette and filled my car with smoke. He tapped the window down just a hair, to let out the smoke, and the cold wind blared through my car. He didn't seem to notice. But then, I wasn't looking at him. When I parked in front of his house, he didn't get out immediately. He just sat there, knees pulled up to his chest and smoking. I hadn't reminded him to buckle up again. I was too concerned with the current situation.

"I don't think you should come over tonight." he said flatly, taking a drag on his cigarette and tipping the ash out the window. I felt his words smash me in the gut. I nearly choked on another sob, but swallowed it down.

"O-okay." I managed. It sounded like the words weren't even coming from me. My voice felt foreign in my chest, and sounded strange as I heard my own sentence meet the air.

Frank continued to smoke, until the cigarette was depleted. He flicked it out of the window and tugged his hat back on. I had been trying not to look at him, and I had successfully kept myself from looking at him head on. I couldn't keep myself from looking at him out of the corner of my eye, though. His face was unreadable to me. As it should be, I supposed. I wasn't really entitled to look at him anymore.

"Don't forget to eat the Twinkies. I mean, not like your fat ass needs it. But you know."

"Yeah. I will." I mumbled.

He coughed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I guess I'm gonna go now. Bye, Gerard."

"Bye, Frank." I whispered, desperately looking at him as he stood outside my car. He was lingering before shutting the door, squinting. He didn't say anything else though. He just slammed it in my face, and I saw the snow from the top of my car rattle off the roof with the force. It stuck out through the blizzard, and so did Frank. I watched the black blob of his body navigate through the storm, waited until the lights snapped on inside his house. He was safe. He was warm.

I drove home slowly through the storm, nearly sliding into an accident on the interstate. It might've been for the best if I had just wound up crashing. I didn't die though, I just slid into the icy mess of my driveway, slunk down to my bedroom. I buried myself in the covers, and didn't make anything that night. I had left my sketchbook in my car. Despite Frank touching it, his fingers being all over it, I didn't want to match his fingerprints with mine. I wasn't entitled. I didn't manage much of anything that night. I did wind up eating the Twinkies Frank gave me. I nibbled them slowly in my bed, curled up into a ball inside my blankets and my sweatshirt, swallowing snot as I sobbed into the wrapper and filled my bed and teeth with crumbs of cake.. Frank had wanted me to eat them.

I'd do whatever Frank wanted.

My obligation to him was no lessened, even if this new mistake might be the end of everything.


	6. Chapter 6

The next day I stayed home from school, opting instead to hole up in my room and work on the pile of projects I had to complete. I managed to do most of the small drawing assignments. There had been stacks upon stacks of things I was supposed to do. Still lives, landscapes, furniture, food, rooms, everything I wasn't interested in. None of the assignments called for people, they were requiring of the inanimate. I scratched all the shapes out on my paper, in the new sketchbook I had found lying around my room. It was empty, and perfect for the task of being filled with things that were not Frank. My drawings had all the right lines, all of the necessary shading. They weren't as good as how I could draw Frank, though. There were things in each sketch that were "off" in some way. Whether it was a trick of the light, a trick of the lines, or something else, they were distinctively imperfect. While the flaws weren't glaringly obvious, they were noticeable enough to be there.

Frank had noticed, and that was the biggest problem. If he had just been set on money, on nothing but money, everything would have been okay. I had been keeping my wallet in the front zipper pocket of my backpack. He should've thought to look there first. There was no reason he should have gone digging through the main compartment. I didn't keep my wallet there. No one did. That wasn't a thing people did. Frank shouldn't have thought that my wallet would be inside the pile of--well, Frank--that was clustered inside of my backpack. Or maybe if I had thrown my backpack in the backseat, this wouldn't have happened. It was a messy matter of circumstances, and the end situation was just a consequence that every single wrong circumstance had welded together into this result.

I moved down the list of assignments, methodically. With every drawing I completed, I crossed off the name of it on the assignment sheet. Slowly, surely, that sheet became more covered with black pen and less with text. My fingers were aching, and my resolve was starting to weaken. These drawings weren't emotional. They weren't an act of craft, just an act of labor. My sketchbook was three-fourths full of them by the time I finished everything that was due for one class. Completing assignments had proved itself to be easier given the fact that I hadn't slept. Not to say I hadn't tried, of course. I had been too miserable to create, initially. But after tossing and turning, after spilling my eyes into my pillowcase, the feeling ceased. I had been left awake, empty, and with nothing to do. So I found something to do. 

I set that sketchbook aside, figuring I would turn it all in tomorrow. The entire sketchbook, I thought. I may as well. I didn't have any reservations about giving it in, as I didn't have an attachment. While selling those pieces of Frank last semester had been a rip from my fabric, giving up this book would be nothing, not even a hair off of my head. I still had my other classes to take care of. I could write my essays tonight, and maybe do the other make up assignments for art history. I had half a textbook to read, too. The teacher had said I was "lucky" that I was being given a chance to do all this makeup work, and that the community college didn't allow for failure except in extreme situations. I was becoming closer to an extreme situation, though.

Around five that evening, I surfaced up to my kitchen to get something to eat. I didn't have the want in my mouth, which still tasted stale and sweet from the Twinkies of last night. My stomach rolled as I thought about them, queasy with the memory. I saw outside though, and noticed the after effects of the blizzard. Mikey was in the kitchen, too, and he was sure to shoot me a glare when I went to the fridge. I kept my head down, especially when my mother came into the kitchen. She acknowledged me only in passing, happier to talk to Mikey about how school had apparently been cancelled that day. Apparently it was the worst storm we'd had in years, that things would likely be shut down for a week at least. A week. I sank down into the bowl of cereal I had prepared. A week I wouldn't be called into work, either. And a week for sure that I wouldn't see Frank. If that chance was present even at all anymore, even if there was no blizzard to blanket Jersey inside roofs and walls. I was stuck at home, left to drown inside my personal miseries.

\----

Despite the storm, my school wasn't technically "closed." I drove across the treacherous roads to get to campus, and I wound up spending a few days straight there. It was deserted, without even the janitors around to nurse the halls. I lived off of vending machine food and the coffee machines, halfheartedly crossing more projects off of my list. Ceramics was the hardest to push through, having to wait on clay to dry and things to fire. The directions on the kiln helped, but I still destroyed my first project when trying to work on it. It had taken me this long to even start on any of these projects. Each was literally my first.

I hammered at the computer when I was waiting for those things to finish, and my designs on there came out clumsy at best. At least with ceramics I could still use my hands. Graphic design was a regulated nightmare, and I was frustrated and made miserable by the fact that I couldn't just reach into the computer and move things around with my fingers. At least I was safe from my feelings of Frank, though. If nothing else, the frustration and misery I found while working with the computer pushed Frank out of my head. 

Ceramics didn't offer that. Holding the soggy clay in my hands just made me wish I could come into contact with Frank again. The clay stuck to my hands, almost encasing them in a shell. I wasn't sure if it was sealing Frank from before into my skin, or if it was armor that would lock Frank out of ever touching me again. I fell asleep on the benches in the art room, covered in mess, two nights in a row. I wasn't sure if they were nights--I could've fallen during the day. I lost my sense of time, being indoors like that. My mother only called me once, to make sure I wasn't dead. I felt dead enough.

I wonder if the janitor thought me dead, eventually, when he finally came in once, screaming upon seeing my body sprawled across the floor. I apologized, calmed him down, and showed my ID to prove that I was a student and not homeless. I looked homeless enough, dirty and unshowered. I had started to be able to smell myself before the janitor had barged in, but that wasn't so new. And at least after the incident with the janitor, I only had a few things left to finish. I could pack up my stuff and go home that night, and present everything to my teachers the next day.

\-----

It had been a week since the blizzard.

It had been a week since I had seen Frank.

\-----

It had been two weeks since the blizzard.

It had been two days since I had seen Frank.

He had stopped in once, and avoided making eye contact with me. He took his food for free as usual, then rushed out the doors. His head had been down, and he had forgotten to wear his gloves. Even though the weather was warmer, the sun was out and the snow was melting, I was still worried about him catching cold, or the wind scraping up his hands and making them rough. I wanted to hold Frank's hand.

I finally got around to pulling my sketchbook out of my car, and I took it to bed with me. It had been held by Frank, and I slept on my back with the book resting on top of my chest, my hands cradled around it. Mine were so much bigger than Frank's. I flipped through it a few times, slowly like Frank hadn't, looking at every line I had made, every individual documentation of Frank's face. He had seen these lines now, I thought. But it couldn't be much different than looking in the mirror, could it? Was I really that wrong in drawing the same thing a glass was reflecting? I had just gone after him because I had wanted to look at him. I didn't want to hurt him, or do anything bad. I just wanted him still and perfect, and looking at me. I wanted him to consent to sit for me for hours and hours, letting me draw without end. If he decided, at the end, to maybe crawl into my bed with me, or invite me into his, that would be alright. 

It wouldn't hurt so much to let his arms ensconce me. It wouldn't hurt so much to hold him, warm and thin.

It wouldn't hurt like not seeing him did.

\----

It had been three weeks since the blizzard. 

It had been thirty minutes since Frank came in, asking me for a ride home.

I had nodded.

It was thirty more minutes later that Frank was in my passenger seat once again, the same location as the previous disaster. I parked in his driveway. He hadn't spoken the ride home. He did speak three words, though. He gave me a brisk, direct command, the same format as everything else he had given me that day had been.

"Come over tonight." he said before shutting the door in my face.

I swallowed in the emptiness of my car. I'd be there. He didn't wait for my response. He knew I would be there. I wouldn't miss it for anything, and he knew that. He knew it even more after having seen my sketchbook. What he thought and what he knew were two very different things, though, and the first was still a mystery to me.

It seemed I would be finding out tonight.


	7. Chapter 7

When I got to Frank's house, he yanked me in. I was wrenched by the strings of my hoodie, and he almost choked me. My knees were muddy from crawling in the window. Frank shoved me into a chair that he had already dragged out, and promptly turned his back. It was a folding chair, cold and metallic, and he had left the main overhead light on in his bedroom. The fluorescent glow of it was harsh, even on Frank. It wasn't that he lost the appeal of his features, it was just that they didn't charm as they did in other lights. I was used to seeing him in soft, warm lighting. The deli was sure to create an amiable atmosphere, and that didn't include harsh lighting. I was used to seeing Frank under a gentle glow, not an accusing spotlight. 

 

If Frank didn't look as good under this light, I was sure that I was hideous. I couldn't remember when I had last washed, and the way Frank wrinkled his nose at me after tugging me into has room indicated that it had at least been a while. I knocked my knees together in the chair, slumping over to try and hide in my coat. Frank was still turned around, standing a ways away from me and facing in the opposite direction. He had left his khakis on. His school clothes. He hadn't changed out of them. There was a sweatshirt covering up the buttoned shirt I assumed he had on underneath, but it wasn't his usual one. It was gray, and I had caught a glimpse of his school logo on it. It matched the one my brother owned. 

 

I was getting more and more anxious, counting lint balls clinging to the back of his sweatshirt and staring at the whorl of hair on his head. His hair was really starting to grow out. It was almost getting shaggy. I wondered if he would cut it soon. It could be forced, by school rules and regulations. I wasn't sure if I wanted him to keep it long or cut it short. It wasn't my decision at all, but like every little thing that Frank did, it would of course affect me. I had gotten used to taking longer and longer strokes with my pencil when I sketched his hair out, but I was upset that those strokes were covering up the swell of his cheeks, the slope of his nose. Especially his eyes. There was a new challenge in capturing the way his bangs skimmed his eyelashes, but I would rather be dealing with the way his eyeballs themselves captured the light. I wasn't getting that as much anymore. 

 

I was so caught up thinking about him and staring at the rear view of him that when he suddenly turned around, I flinched in my seat.

 

"So." he said noncommittally, hands in his pockets. I didn't say anything, only blinking up at him briefly before ducking my head down. I had started shaking again. He stepped closer. I saw his socks move across the rug. 

 

"Don't be shy, Gerard. Never had a problem looking at me before, did you?" Frank sneered. I looked up at him, and his eyes were dark, matching the scowl spread across his face. I swallowed.

 

"Frank, I--"

 

"So did you bring your sketchbook?"

 

"Y-yeah, um....."

 

"Get it out." he demanded. There was no give in his voice. It was cold and harsh, and I couldn't determine the intent in his speech.

 

"O-okay." I had brought my backpack, just in case. In case of what I hadn't been able to determine earlier. But I guess instinct had anticipated this moment. I dug out my sketchbook with shaky hands, and as soon as I had raised it to my lap he snatched it out of my hands. He flipped through it harshly, unblinkingly. He blew forwards and backwards, not going in order, but skimming as he saw fit. He stopped on a page somewhere in the middle. 

 

"This one. This is me eating. Me at my table, right?" he said, turning the book around and shoving it in front of my face. It was. It was one from a long time ago, or at least the pose was. I had used one of my earlier drawings for reference, and redone it with my new memories and understandings of Frank. He was leaned over, shorter tuft of hair falling across his forehead. He was looking down at a half-eaten sandwich, picking at the crumbs. I had a brief flash of pride, personal pride. My teachers could shove it. I was too capable of drawing objects, landscapes. They were simply always centered around Frank.

 

"Y-yes."

 

Frank started flipping again. "And this one?" 

 

That one, at the beginning, was Frank through the window of the deli, waiting outside. His face wasn't so visible, instead the drawing showed mostly the back of him. 

 

"Yes." I affirmed again.

 

Frank leaned against the footboard of his bed, a considerable distance from me as he continued to turn the pages, slower now. He moved past the middle, working through the latter half of the sketchbook. I could feel the sweat seeping out of my pores and smearing itself all over my body. Frank's eyebrows raised slightly, and his mouth opened just barely. "This one."

 

I cringed as soon as he said it. I knew what drawings were tucked in the back pages of  my sketchbook.

 

"This one." he repeated, flipping the book around for me to see. It was one of the drawings of Frank in his room. Touching himself, in his room. In his bed. It was a stolen memory from one of the times I had watched him through his window. Before I had been caught. Before he gave me his show. A few of the details were off, and they were obvious to me. It was close enough. It was certainly obvious enough. The Frank in the drawing had his eyelids squeezed shut, his mouth open in an O, the muscles in his arm clenched tight. The hand shoved between his legs. I nodded to confirm his statement, I stared at a blank space on the page, not wanting to look at what I had drawn. Especially not wanting to look at Frank.

 

There was silence between us. Frank set the book down on his bed, and I saw him cross his arms out of the corner of my eye. I kept my hands heavy on my kneecaps, shaking too much for me to try and steady them. I heard him sigh, heard him crack his neck. I wanted to bite my lip, bite my nails perhaps. I was feeling inclined to bite off my tongue, and maybe drown myself out of this situation.

 

"Why?" he asked, tossing the sketchbook away from him, onto the bedspread. "Why me?"

 

I didn't say anything.

 

"Gerard."

 

I looked up at him, lower lip stuck between my teeth.

 

"Why me?"

 

"I--well--you, you were there." I couldn't think of anything better to say. It was all I had. 

 

"You work at a fucking deli. There are a million other people there every day." Frank was looking straight at me, and his mouth betrayed no emotion.

 

"Y-you're..."

 

"I'm what? I'm so special that you have--you have a hundred pages of me? Of nothing but me?" he spat, slamming his hands on the bed with a thump.

 

"I--"

 

"There's no one else in here, Gerard. Nothing else. You haven't drawn a single thing that isn't me." His voice wasn't steady. It was wavering, and I saw him clench his hands around the fabric of the sheets."You only draw me. Why? Why am I the only thing you've ever fucking drawn?"

 

"I don't know." I whimpered."I don't know, I don't...I..." I was crying, my nose starting to run. 

 

"You're fucking crazy. There's something fucking wrong with you." he went on. "You've been watching me? This whole fucking time? For--for months, and you've been doing this. The whole time. Every time you've seen me, every day? You--what's fucking wrong with you? Huh?" 

 

Frank was glaring at me fiercely, leaning forward and spitting at me with every word that came out of his mouth. "Tell me. Fucking tell me."

 

"I don't know what happened. I--I don't know...w-what's wrong, what's...I'm sorry! I'm r-really sorry, I just, I l-liked drawing you. A lot. I--that's really it, I don't...I didn't mean to do anything b-bad!" I blubbered.

 

"That's not an answer! I want to know why me!" Frank demanded, pointing a finger at himself for emphasis. "What's so fucking special about my face that you have to draw it a million times, huh? Huh?"

 

"It's b-beautiful!" I cried.

 

Frank sighed, hitting the bed again and rolling his eyes. "That's not it."

 

"Y-you're perfect, a-and gorgeous, and p-p-pale, and your bone structure, a-and...and you! It's just you, Frank, y-you're....you're gorgeous." I sniffled, trying to calm my breathing down.

 

"You realize I'm not a fucking girl." he huffed.

 

"S-so? T-they're just adjectives, they're n-not...gender specific."

 

"You're fucking nuts."

 

"I love you."

 

Frank visibly recoiled, his nose scrunching up and his lip curling. "No, Gerard. You..no."

 

"W-well...n-no, not like that, I...it's just you, Frank. Y-you've got this...t-this...thing."

 

"And what thing is that? You think I look cute when I touch myself? You like lookin' through my window and seeing that?"

 

"It's not that...it's..."

 

"It's what?"

 

"It's just you." I mumbled, looking up at him. My eyes were sticky and salted with tears, and I could feel the snot drying on my upper lip. "I liked drawing you way before I ever saw your...your...."

 

"My dick?" Frank said, unimpressed.

 

"T-that." I managed, swallowing. "Frank--it's just..."

 

"So what, I've got a pretty face? I'm a pretty boy? Is that it?"

 

"You're more than just that." I said, even softer.

 

"I'm pretty and you like me. You like drawing me. That's it, right? Tell me that's it." Frank said, crossing his arms over his chest and starting to talk faster again.

 

"It's not just that. T-that's not just it."

 

"Then what is it?" He raised an accusatory eyebrow at me.

 

"It's...I...it's, I don't know what it is." I looked down at my hands again. Frank was silent, and I could only hear him breathing, light and shallow in comparison to myself. I could hear my own heavy exhalations, air heaving out of my mouth.

 

The silence dragged on. Frank didn't even have a clock in his room to add dramatic effect. It did make the effect worse, though. It made everything even more uncertain. I didn't know how long I had been here, didn't know how long this silence had been suffering in the air between us. I was about to start counting sentences when he broke.

 

"Draw me then." he said flatly.

 

"W-wh--"

 

"Draw me! If you like drawing me so much, do it. Look. I'm right here. Do it." Frank kicked his shoes off, scooting higher up on his bed, leaning against his headboard and  propping himself up with pillows. He crossed his feet at the ankles, folding his arms across his chest. He was in pajamas. I hadn't noticed he was in pajamas. That being said, it wasn't like me to not pick up on details like that. The crisp white of his shirt, the frayed hems of his pants.

 

"Well?" he snapped, breaking my stare. "Are you going to draw me or just fucking look at me? Oh, wait. Let me guess. It is my dick, isn't it? What, you need me to take off my--"

 

"No, no! I...no. Y-you're fine I--you seriously w-want me to, to, d-draw you?"

 

"Would I be sitting here if I didn't?"

 

"N-no, you wouldn't...I...s-sorry...let me just...pencil, shit...um...."

 

I dug around in my bag, clawing around until I found a pen. A pen, which wouldn't do any good. I had to get a pencil. Pencil. I zoned my mind in on that single thought, trying to keep it contained to a calm enough focus. I finally found one, curling my fingers around it briefly before it slipped from my grasp. I slid my hand in after it, grabbing it and taking it out. 

 

My sketchbook was still lying on Frank's bed, and I hesitantly got up and grabbed it, taking it by the corner and jerking it into my hand. I didn't look at him, and I flipped it open quickly once I was sitting down again. I turned through the spiral bindings quickly, not looking at what I had already drawn. I was wincing just touching it, and the page I eventually came to was one of the last in the book. 

 

"Are you ready yet?" I heard Frank drawl from the bed.

 

"Y-yeah." I set my pencil down to the paper, looking up at Frank. Too far, I thought. "Can I...um..."

 

"Can you what?" 

 

"Can I...m-move my chair? I-it would be easier to be...to be closer. T-to you. For um, so um...so I could see. So I could see you. S-see you b-better."

 

"Uh. Sure."

 

I picked up the chair, awkwardly carrying it underneath my behind as I waddled over to his bedside. It reminded me of the few times I had been under obligation to take care of Mikey when he got sick during his younger years. He had always been too delirious with fever to resent my presence, and even if he had, Mom always wanted me by his side when she had to work. It was okay if I took off school, she told me. I wouldn't have bothered learning anything anyway. 

 

Frank had never been this close, this still before. I had been daydreaming about it for ages, about what it would be like for him to pose. He was barely posing at all, just slouching onto his chest. His chin was skimming his collarbones, and his bottom lip was pouting, just a little bit. His hair was covering up his face, and I wanted to move it. It would be easier to see him, should that pesky strand just get out of the way. I reached over and pushed it out of the way, pinching his soft hair between my fingers and skimming my fingertips over the smooth skin of his forehead.

 

"What the fuck?" Frank snapped, sitting up and smacking my hand away. He pushed his hair out of his face himself, pulling strands behind his ears. "What the fuck is that?"

 

"Y-your hair, I--"

 

"Don't touch me!" 

 

"O-okay, okay, s-s-s-orry..." 

 

Frank settled back on the bed, sighing, and I picked up my pencil again. I tried to make exact traces of him, the normal pattern I took when drawing him. But drawing him before had always been on instinct, memory. This, this was Frank as a live model. I looked at Frank, down at my drawing. It was horrible. It was hardly anything but a rough caricature of Frank. Every single detail was off. The cheeks were wrong, the nose was wrong, every spare bit of shading I had already done was terribly, terribly off. 

 

I was horrified, embarrassed. I ripped the page out of the notebook, crumpling it up and shoving it in my pocket. I had never needed to tear out a drawing before, and I barely even needed to edit a normal drawing. On a normal day. But this wasn't normal. I wished that I had a lighter on me so I could burn it out and away. I didn't want that awful drawing to exist.

 

"Is there a problem?" Frank asked, tilting his head a little to look at me.

 

"N-no. I just, t-there was...there was a p-problem." I said, taking another look at him before starting on a second attempt at drawing. 

 

It went more smoothly this time, with the outline of his face pouring out of my pencil and onto the page. I sketched faster, filling up the page, coloring in the dark of his hair and the tiny bags under his eyes. He must have a tendency to stay up late, I thought before realizing that it was already very, very late. I had arrived at his house around 12:15. I didn't know how long it had been since.

 

I fell into my usual pattern of drawing, forgetting Frank was there. I forgot until I looked up to catch a tiny blemish, a speck of a mole, the shallow crevices of his ears. There were a few things about him that were different up close, making for a learning experience. There was still so much of Frank, though. It would be impossible to learn everything about him in this one sitting. It was only one angle, one part of his body. There was a limit to his existence right now, a limit that I wanted to lift. I needed more time, more sessions. I had to turn his face to every single individual angle. This individual piece wasn't nearly enough.

 

It wasn't enough, but it was done. "Done." I said quietly. Frank rolled over, looking at me and then ripping the sketchbook out of my hands. His eyebrows raised as he looked at the page.

 

"It's me." he said, blinking and tracing over the hollows of his cheeks. The illustrated ones, not his actual ones. 

 

"It's you." I replied, biting my lip and looking at him hesitantly. He didn't match my gaze, instead keeping his eyes trained on the paper. He kept running his fingers over what I had drawn, slowly.

 

"It's good."

 

"It's...it's good?" 

 

"Really good."

 

My heart flipped over, an egg in my chest, and I felt a hot surge in my stomach. I think that was what they called "pride." "T-thank y-y-you." I managed. I twitched my mouth up into a smile. I even showed my teeth.

 

"Can I keep it?" he asked, looking up at me, hands still on the paper.

 

"Can you--oh! You can...y-y-eah. Y-you can keep it. I-if you want."

 

"Yeah. I want." Frank smiled at me, ripping the page out of my sketchbook and setting it on his nightstand. "Thanks."

 

"It's r-really that good?" I asked eagerly. "Is it, is it...you like it? Y-you really wanna keep it? You like it t-that much? You--"

 

"Gerard. Stop. Holy shit, calm down." Frank put a hand in front of my face, frowning at me. "It's good, okay? I told you it was good. Calm down."

 

"I-I'm j-just really glad you l-like it." 

 

"Okay. It's late, you know."

 

"Y-yeah...I know."

 

"You should go home." he said, yawning and scratching at his chest.

 

"I-I should go home." I repeated, getting up hastily and scrambling over to my backpack. I shoved in my sketchbook, pencils, zipped it up and put it on my back. "W-w-well, goodbye." I said, picking up the chair and moving it over to the window so I could get out. "Bye, Frank."

 

Frank sighed from the bed, groaning with effort. "Goodbye, Gerard." he said, dragging out my name.

 

I scooted out of the window, more gracefully than I was normally capable of doing, and crawled through the grass with a fat grin on my face, delighted past belief. I hadn't kept it. But it had happened. I didn't have the drawing to prove it, but it had happened. It had happened.


	8. Chapter 8

Days later, I didn't know if it had happened. The weekend had gotten in the way, as it always did, and although I worked on the weekends, I didn't encounter Frank. He never came in on the weekends though, so that wasn't really surprising. It was depressing enough, but I was used to it. I wasn't used to the new thoughts that I had to accompany through my hours behind the register, though. I wasn't used to thinking of Frank so close up, and so sharp. I was remembering moles and even tiny pimples on his skin instead of the vaguer definitions of "pale" and "flushed" that I was normally limited to. I passed all of Saturday stuck inside Frank's head, stuck inside my head, and I rolled home to stare at my empty sketchbook. I drew Frank from memory, a few times, but had to force myself to do homework after a little while. Drawing Frank from memory felt different, felt wrong now after I had been given the opportunity to draw Frank in person.

I had been given the opportunity, but I wasn't sure of its legitimacy. It existed in my memory, of course. I had been living endlessly inside that memory lately. I didn't have any concrete record of it, though. There was no solid proof, there was no concrete evidence. The drawing I had done of Frank in the flesh had been taken out of my hands and control, and it was somewhere in Frank's room. As far as I knew. The incident had been so monumental, so bizarre, so inconceivable that I was wondering if I had made it all up. Fine details of a person weren't difficult to forge, or make up.

It seemed more likely that I had gone crazy and made the whole thing up. That thought was a lot more plausible than how still Frank had been for me when I sketched out the pieces of his face, the slope of his neck. 

Frank had never had me over on a weekend before, and I thought that it would be inappropriate to go over to his house alone, uninvited. Frank's house was a privilege, and I didn't have the confidence nor the daring to tap on his basement window without Frank having outright told me to do so earlier in the day. Besides, Frank was probably busy. He had to be busy with something. I frowned, the faces of Frank's old friends flashing through my mind. He didn't run with that crowd anymore. For whatever reason, his time with them was finished.But there was likely someone new. Surely, there had to be a new crowd for Frank to run with.

It was easy for high schoolers like Frank to make friends, I thought. Frank was perfect after all, and he had to magnetize other people. He had magnetized me, without a doubt, and then I paused on my bed, taking the end of my pencil to chew in my mouth and lean against my headboard. Thinking about definitions, I realized that I didn't know what Frank was. I didn't know if he was my friend, or not my friend, or something else entirely. Most likely, there was no way that Frank could consider me as a friend. 

I asked him the next time he came into the shop, that Monday.

"Uh, um, Frank?" I stuttered, handing him a wrapped stack of oatmeal-raisin cookies. They were freshly baked. "A-are we friends?"

Frank, who had been staring down at his outdated flip cell phone, looked up at me, raising his eyebrows and blinking. "What?"

"Friends, um. Are we...are you and me...are we friends? Are you...me...friends? Like. Like us. You and me, friends." 

"Uh. Sure." Frank frowned, looking down at his phone again. He took a cookie from the stack and began to eat it as he moved his thumb, texting away with one hand. As battered and old as his phone was, I realized it was better than mine. 

"Do we like, do stuff then?"

"Like fucking? No, that's not what friends do."

"O-oh. W-well we're not fucking, so...." An image of me and Frank fucking flashed through my head, and I was glad that I had the counter to hide my lower half. The word was dirty coming off of Frank's tongue, and dirtier still with the picture it conjured in my mind. I thought of what it would be like to meet Frank under a pair of bedsheets, to have both of our things touch each other, and I was still wondering what it would be like when the sound of Frank's phone snapping shut snapped me out of my daze.

"What time do you get off?" Frank asked.

"G-get, oh. Oh, um...my shift ends, in...in, in half an hour."

"Wanna hang out afterwards?"

"Hang out?"

"Yeah, dipshit. You know, go outdoors beyond your basement?"

"How did you know I live in the basement?" I asked, surprised. There couldn't be any way that Frank had been to my house, not at any point. He didn't know where I lived. I supposed there was the phonebook, but that didn't seem reasonable. It wasn't, as Frank rolled his eyes at my question.

"It's pretty obvious." he said, picking up the cookies and walking over to his usual table. "You got paid, right?"

"Uh, y-yeah."

"Sweet." Frank said, and then he didn't speak to me the rest of my shift, instead choosing to stuff his face with food and flip through magazines, leaving anthills of crumbs beneath their pages.

When my shift ended, Frank was at my heels as soon as we were both exiting the store, walking down the street to my car. Frank clambered into the front seat, making no comment about the fact that it was less cluttered by a long shot. I had been careful to clean it that weekend, for Frank's benefit of course. The car still smelled like old french fries, but at least Frank wasn't sitting in old french fry wrappers anymore. Frank told me that we were going to the mall, that he had some things he needed to buy. I didn't go to the mall very often, and I turned off of the wrong exit, causing Frank to fling a lot of "what the fucks!" out of his mouth and complain loudly until I navigated back onto the interstate and back in the right direction again. He didn't talk much to me on the ride other than that, instead choosing to punch the buttons on my stereo, violently flipping through radio station after radio station.

We got to the mall quickly enough, though given the season and the time it was already starting to get dark. I was sure to lock my car up tight--it was Jersey, after all--to Frank's impatience as he hopped from foot to foot in the cold February air. "Come on," he urged, stomping his foot on a frozen puddle. "It's gonna close before you're fucking ready."

I hurried up, jogging along behind Frank as best as I could upon getting into the mall. Frank blew threw the department store, stopping to look at nothing, though I personally was overwhelmed by all the different things inside that one store. It was easier when we broke out of it and into the main area of the mall, decorated with storefronts but overall less visually engulfing. Frank looked around, snapping his head back and forth, and then dragged me over to the mall map, standing in a marquee near some benches. I was already winded, and I thought of how nice it would be to sit down on a bench. Before I could, though, Frank yanked me by the hand and up one of the escalators. 

"We're gonna get some good shit." Frank said excitedly.

"What are we buying?" I asked, huffing a little bit as I leaned on the escalator railing.

"Good shit." Frank said, and then we were going fast again, and I was blinking in the bright light of the F.Y.E. 

I saw Frank run around in between aisles, having seemingly forgotten me, and I took the opportunity to sit down against a display for the latest Disney film. It was near Valentine's day, so they were advertising some princess love special. The dingy black of my work cargo pants didn't fit in so well next to the bright pink of the display. My chest hurt from running, and I could feel the sweat of my chest sticking to my t-shirt. Frank found me again too quickly for my liking, though, a stack of CDs piled in his arms.

"Stand up, stand up!" he urged. 

I was then following him over to the checkout counter, and he was sliding his hands down my pants. My heart skipped ten beats, but then I realized he had just pulled out my wallet, proceeding to dump his CDs on the counter with a clatter as he started pulling bills out of my wallet. The cashier glared at me, scanning the CDs (all of which had violent-looking covers and the names of bands I didn't understand mixed with the album art) and dropping them into a plastic sack.

"That'll be $67.89," the cashier sighed. 

I almost choked when they said that sum, but Frank had already shoved three of my twenties and a ten at the cashier, barely waiting to receive his (my?) change and dump it in the plastic sack before taking off again. I gave the cashier a helpless look before running after Frank again. He ran into some dark looking store playing loud music, some aggressive rock song, and I didn't even have a chance to look at the sign in my pursuit of Frank. I thought it said something like "Hot Topic" but I wasn't sure. The cashier in that store greeted me, but I didn't have time to respond. Frank was already calling me back to his side where he was rummaging through a rack of clothes.

"What do you think of these?" he asked me, holding up an impossibly small pair of pants.

"They're...Frank, you're in the girl section." I said, looking up and seeing several dresses and pink shirts on the wall. Most of the shirts were black, most of the clothing period was black. A lot of the shirts had loud, offensive slogans on them, or else they had logos on them that matched the angry looking cover art of the CDs that Frank had purchased. I saw a few shirts with anime fairy girls on them, and relaxed a little bit. Those, at least, I was familiar with.

Frank rolled his eyes at me. "No shit. Guy pants aren't tight enough." 

He tore up the rest of the store in a flash, ignoring the clearance section as he snatched up t-shirt after t-shirt, piles of hoodies, and several pairs of tight, tight pants. He grabbed an attendant, demanding that the fitting room be unlocked, and then he snapped at me to follow him back. At first I tried to follow him inside the small room, but the look he gave me when I tried left me to stand outside instead, waiting as I listened to the rustle of clothes from within. The door opened eventually, though.

"What do you think?" Frank huffed, stepping out of the room. The pants he was wearing were far too tight for him, and the flesh of his legs and hips were sealed up inside of them like sausage casings. The t-shirt he had on was just as tight. I could understand why Frank had gravitated towards the girl's section. He was small, and no article of clothing from the male side could have achieved the sealing affect that the girls' clothing did.

"I--I, uh..."

"Do I look hot?" he asked, turning around to display his ass.

"Um, uh..."

"Do you wanna fuck me? Do you wanna put it in, huh?" he continued to interrogate.

"I--" I was lost for words. For one, no one had ever asked me that question before. For one, no one like Frank had ever asked me that. Frank himself had never asked me that before. Maybe he had. I couldn't recall at this point. He probably had. Maybe he wanted me to say yes.

Before I could conceive an answer to give him, Frank smirked and shut the door again. "Gotcha." he said. 

Frank returned a few minutes later, dressed in his regular clothes and carrying a sizable stack of black clothing. He jerked his head, motioning for me to follow him to the register. He dumped all the clothes on the counter, looking at me expectantly.

"Frank, I only have thirty dollars left in my wallet," I whispered to him.

"You have your card, don't you?"

"Y-yeah, but..."

"But nothing," Frank said, stretching up to whisper in my ear. "I'll let you see my butt if you buy me that stuff."

My face flamed red, and I dug out my card and handed it to the pierced, tattooed girl ringing up Frank's items. She smirked at me, running my card and handing it back to me. Frank's purchases totaled $315.20. I nearly passed out, but not before Frank got up on his toes again to kiss me on my cheek, pulling me out of the store and back out to my car. I didn't realize that I was carrying his bags for him until I had to set them down to get my keys out of my pocket. Frank put one of his new CDs into my stereo on the way home, and it was the same loud music that had been playing inside of the store. I didn't really even notice it. I was in a daze. I had nearly spent four hundred dollars. It was for Frank, so it was okay, but still. That was my entire salary from the past week, and then some. 

Arriving at Frank's house, he was fast getting out of my car. He said something about his parents being home soon, and he waved himself out of my car without much to-do or sentiment lingering. I watched him struggle to carry all the bags up to his porch, and lingered in front of the house until the lights inside came on, like I always did. I drove home, wallet significantly lighter and head significantly more confused. Driving home, I realized I hadn't even gotten a chance to ask him about the other night. Hopefully, I would see him tomorrow, though. And hopefully, it would be a less expensive visit. I was dry now, and I hoped that Frank wouldn't be too upset at me. I'd get him more things when I had more money, I decided. And until then, I'd make it up to him some other way. Certainly, there could be some other way.


	9. Chapter 9

I was sure to bake some extra muffins when I got into work early the next day. I skipped my last class so I could get over early. Blueberry. Blueberry were Frank's favorites. He would be happy, I thought, when I presented him with a fresh, hot muffin. Really happy. It would make up for me not being able to get him everything he'd wanted the other day. I remembered the quick promise of Frank from the other day, the one about him showing me his...his buttocks. I blushed quickly. It was uncomfortable, and of course Frank came into the door right as my face was burning up.

 

"Food?" he drawled, slumping over the counter. "I'm staaaarving."

 

"Y-yeah. Muffins." I said quickly, grinning at him and presenting him with one. It was warm in my hands. Fresh out of the oven, just as I had planned. 

 

"I don't want that." Frank said, wrinkling his nose up at the pastry in my hand. "I want cheesecake."

 

"Cheesecake? Cheesecake, crap, um..." I looked around, seeing the stale one from this morning sitting in the display. "It's...'

 

"Mine." Frank said, reaching for it and making grabbing hand motions. "Cut it, hurry up."

 

"Um, I...oh, just, um...here." I said, shoving the entire plate at Frank. It was going to have to be thrown out soon anyway.

 

"Really? Awesome." Frank snatched a plastic fork before ferociously delving into the dessert. "Tastes like shit." he said perkily, crumbs covering his mouth.

 

"I--it's--" 

 

Frank waved a hand at me, shaking his head as he swallowed his mouthful of food. "I'm kidding. Dude, chill out. You were fine yesterday."

 

I ducked my head down, picking at the paper wrapping of the blueberry muffin. Yesterday, I had gone home all alone after dropping Frank off, staring confused at my steering wheel. The trip hadn't given me anything at all, and that wasn't limited to a sexual sense. I hadn't been trying to buy my way into Frank's pants. I had bought Frank those things yesterday because he had asked for them. I hadn't wanted to use the money in my wallet as any sort of cheap way to get to Frank. It wouldn't have been cheap, even if that had been my intention. I was out of money for a while now, even after my next paycheck went through. Some of the things I'd purchased for Frank had been on credit.

 

I wasn't regretting what I had done, nor was I bemoaning it. It had been worth it. There was Frank, for one. For two, the Frank I was seeing today, wearing the clothes newly purchased yesterday, looked very good. The jeans were tight. They looked even tighter than they had in the store the other day, and I could see the rounded curves of his rear. The rear he'd promised to show me. I shook my head, looking up at him from the muffin. He raised his eyebrows at me, scorning me as he always did.

 

"How's that muffin doing?" he snickered.

 

"I--sorry. I got, got...distracted. Um. I, sorry." I hastily set the muffin down on the countertop. "So. I, um. Are you...do you want anything else? T-to eat?"

 

"Nah. I was gonna go in a minute. I'm full."

 

I looked at his plate. He had only taken a few bites of the cheesecake. So much for starving. "You're leaving already?" I asked.

 

"Yeah. Homework," he shrugged, picking his backpack up and tugging it over his sweatshirt. The new sweatshirt. The one I had purchased for him.

 

"Oh. I--well um. You don't need a ride?"

 

"I'm okay. See you."

 

"S-see you."

 

Frank was halfway out the door before I had the sense to interrupt. "W-wait!"

 

"What?" he sighed, turning around. "I have to go home."

 

"Am I--am I going...am I c-c-coming tonight? T-to your house?" 

 

Frank smiled at me. "Yeah. Sure you can."

 

The bell dinged and jingled as he stepped out into the cold--well, not so much the cold. It was getting warmer now, with the seasons shifting into spring. It was almost warm outside, pushing fifty degrees. Peculiar still for how relatively early it was. It had been sweaty outside when I met him, sweaty when I first saw his face. It'd been months. Valentine's Day was coming close, and Halloween had passed long ago. It was a hot streak right now, for February. Valentine's Day was in just a couple weeks. I wondered if I should do anything for Frank. We weren't anything, so to speak. Or, well, perhaps we were. There had been that conversation. A while ago, we'd had that one conversation. His parents had interrupted before anything could be settled, though.

 

Perhaps something had gone left unsaid, in the middle of that conversation.He'd asked about my feelings for him. He'd mentioned the word "boyfriend." It had just been cut off. Perhaps, then, we already were boyfriends? Is it possible to be in a relationship with someone without knowing it? We did do things, I supposed. He let me come to his house. We went out and did things. He visited me at work every day, and that should mean something, shouldn't it? It should at least imply that something was there.

 

But boyfriends kissed, I remembered. Frank and I hadn't kissed, and even though he'd sat for me to draw him, touched himself in front of me, made promises for more, he had still never come close to even implying that I was worthy of a kiss, or anything similar. We'd never even hugged. If Frank was my boyfriend, maybe tonight he was asking me over for a reason. If he'd only been curious, shouldn't it have worn off by now? It had to be something bigger, I reasoned. He had to like me for some other reason. 

 

I didn't have very much to offer. I knew that. I was overweight, and no one in high school had ever liked me. Not a single girl, not a single boy. Romantic or otherwise, I had coasted through back corners and the darker nooks of classrooms and lunchrooms. It hadn't really mattered, I'd always had better things to do then sit around and talk about stupid things with stupid people. There had only been a few exceptions to the blasted monotony in high school, and I had given them their due time. I had sketched them enough times, drawn them repeatedly enough. Maybe that was why Frank liked me, because I could draw. It was at least one thing that I had to offer, amidst my arsenal of nothing else. 

 

There was one thing else that Frank could like, but I ignored that fact. I ignored what his attention promised, in terms of his attention to what was in my pockets. That wasn't referencing my graphite-smeared hands, or the chubby fingers attached. It was meaning the car keys that shook with every step I took, brushing against my thigh through my work pants, and my currently empty wallet. He'd be more enthusiastic about the last item after next Tuesday, once it filled again with bills. I was surprised he was even inviting me over today, giving what his intentions with me had been yesterday. But, that was where my hope was resting. It was based on the small facts like these, the facts proving that even when I was out of money, even when I was nothing but transportation, he was still allowing me his extended company. 

 

I went on my dusty desktop computer when I got home that evening, to pass the time until I would be able to go to Frank's house, long after dark. Some time passed with the fifteen minutes required for the computer to boot up in the first place, and the rest of the minutes, the hours were spent on looking up some of the bands Frank was always wearing t-shirts of. I had never listened to any of them before, but I stared at the logos in an effort to recreate them. I made three drawings for Frank, the best renditions of them that I could manage. I hoped that he would like them. It was the best I could do, given the fact that I was out of money. There wasn't much else that I could offer him. 

 

Frank took the offering lightly once I arrived, once I scrambled into his window and kicking muddy snow into his bedroom. He sneered at the mess I had made, and looked once more at the drawings before opening up a drawer and tossing them inside. I tried to catch a glance inside of it, wondering if the drawing I had previously given him was stored there as well, but I couldn't see. He gave me a once over, up and down, before glancing back at my face again and demanding that I go upstairs and get him a snack. He turned his back on me after that, flopping into his bed face down. I was left with no choice but to go upstairs to his kitchen.

 

It felt wrong to be in his house, the way I was. He'd assured me that his parents were out, gone without promise to return for a long time. The entire upper level of the house was dark, and I was too shy to turn on the light. I opened the fridge instead, fitting enough that I could find something for Frank inside. Once I had pulled out the food and shut the door again, the slam of it left the house in another resonating silence. There wasn't any noise coming from Frank's room in the basement either. A cold feeling ran through me as I wondered if he could've left the house. Left me alone.

 

I was fast heading down the stairs after that, stomping down them and bursting into his room breathlessly with a pudding cup in hand. I got cold with shock again once I made it through his doorway. Not as a result of Frank being gone, though. Rather, the opposite. Frank was very much present.  Frank was lying face up in his bed now, propped up and shirtless, covered only by his sheets from the waist down. Really, only over the important parts. His pale, thin white legs were spread out across the rest of the bed, one of his hands absently stroking the skin of his thigh as he stared up, blinking at me. 

 

"Are you going to draw me today, Gerard?" Frank asked.

 

I mouthed at him, weakly moving my hands up in front of me. I could feel the strap of my bag digging into my shoulder, the sketchbook and all my other materials weighing it down. I had them on me. I always had them on me. Frank seemed to know that, too. I gaped at him, and he continued to smile, picking up both of his hands to lazily trace his fingers over his chest, all over the delicate ridges of his ribcage, the nearly translucent skin interrupted only by the sharp pink of his nipples. I felt my pants getting tighter, along with my chest.

 

"Are you?" Frank pressed, licking his thumb and dragging it over one of the nubs on his chest. "I got myself all ready for you. Thought you were gonna."

 

"I-I will if...if you want me to." I said, pulling my bag off of my shoulders. I tried to reach in for my materials after I got it off of me, but I wound up spilling its contents all over the floor of Frank's bedroom. "Shit!" I exclaimed, dropping to my knees to try and gather everything.

 

The worst part were all of the pencil shavings that tumbled out and made their way into the carpet. I made my best effort to pick them out of the spaces between the carpet, down on his bedroom floor on my hands and knees. A few pencils had rolled under the bed, and I had to crouch down even lower to retrieve them. While I was eye level with the ground, I noticed a pair of Frank's underwear lying on the floor. They were accompanied by a pile of clothes, a pile that included the clothes he had just been wearing earlier that day. My hand clenched tightly around the pencil I had grabbed when I realized that those were the underpants he had been wearing earlier. That it implied he wasn't wearing any now.

 

"I'm waiting," Frank drawled from his spot above me. I scrambled to my feet again, holding my sketchbook down in front of my hips.

 

"A-are you going to, to sit in any particular way?" I asked.

 

"Are you?" he replied. "Seems like you've got something there that might make sitting kinda uncomfortable," he smirked.

 

"S-s-sorry, I--"

 

"You can't hide it, so don't bother trying."

 

"It doesn't...bother you?"

 

Frank laughed. "I've seen a lotta boners. Yours is nothing special. Maybe a little smaller, but hey. Not your fault."

 

"Sorry."

 

"Stop saying you're sorry," Frank snapped, rolling his eyes. "And stop standing around doing nothing."

 

"Well, w-what do you--"

 

"Draw me, dumbass."

 

"Okay," I said easing myself down onto the chair beside his bed. 

 

I looked up at him, only to see that he was staring directly at the opposite wall. He had no eyes for me. I reached for a pencil, only to drop it on the floor once more. I apologized, and he said nothing. I dropped it again, again, and yet another time, apologizing each time. I was only capable of making a few lines on the paper in between each drop. Each line was shaky, clumsy. It was a product of shaky hands, and with the fifth drop Frank finally snapped.

 

"Are you going to get to it or not?" Frank snapped. "Don't have all night."

 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I babbled. "I-I--"

 

"You're a fuckin' mess," Frank sneered. "Just because you think I'm naked, you can't deal with me. Not like you can do it normally either."

 

"Y-you're not n-n-n--"

 

"No, dipshit," he said, kicking off the blankets. His scrawny legs led up into holes extending from tight, too-small blue underpants. They looked as though they were from the little boys' section, maybe left over from when he was younger. If it weren't for the seams in the front, I would've thought that they were girls' panties. He sat up on his knees, bending over on his hands towards me. His face was close to mine, and he leaned closer forward to bury it into my neck. "You fuckin' stink."

 

His breath, the movement of his lips tickled the skin there. He had managed to bury himself in the space between my sweatshirt, despite how tight the collar had been pulled. I was self conscious of myself again, of the pimples scattered on my cheeks and along my jaw line, and how it had been days since I'd showered. There hadn't been time. There was never time, not with everything I had to do. I was frozen, and it was me staring at the wall this time as the bedsprings creaked, as he crawled across the spread of his bed and set himself in my lap. With one sweep of his hand, he knocked my sketchbook and all of my pencils to the floor once more. 

 

I gasped as he situated himself on my lap better, rolling his hips into mine and settling his rear upon the painful bulge in my pants. He kept squirming, kept moving around on it as he mumbled more insults to me, yanking at the collar of my sweatshirt.

 

"Would wanna take this off, but you probably stink too bad underneath," he said as he slid a hand underneath the bottom hem of it, squeezing at the roll of fat that was dripping over the waistband of my jeans. I hastily tried to suck it in, but he just grabbed it tighter, digging his fingernails into the skin. "Gross," he said as he gave it another squeeze.

 

"Frank, w-what are you--" I tried to ask, but I was cut off by him grabbing the back of my head by the hair and smashing his mouth into mine. His tongue snaked past my lips and started skimming against my teeth, sliding against my tongue upon making its entry. It felt as if he was trying to suck it out of me.

 

Frank pulled back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and pushed his other hand up higher inside my shirt, grabbing a nipple and yanking at it, hard. I yelped at the rough contact, scooting back into the chair. He followed me, crawling even closer and pressing himself harder against my chest. "Cmon, tubbo. Hasn't anyone ever kissed you before?" he asked, licking up the side of my neck before taking a bite at it. "Bet no one but me has ever even looked at you before," he laughed.

 

"Frankie..." I gasped. 

 

"Don't call me that," he growled, biting harder at my neck. "It's Frank. Don't fucking call me Frankie."

 

"S-sorry," I gasped again, Frank biting at me harder, harder, and grabbing at my crotch. He squeezed at it, grinding his own against his hand as well.

 

"Told you you'd get me, didn't I? Cause of yesterday?" he said in between bites, licks, and whatever else he was doing. "Told you I would."

 

"I-I--"

 

"You what, you don't want it?" he crooned at me.

 

"I-I w-want it." I managed to choke out.

 

"Touch me," he said, leaning up and whispering into my ear. "I know you've wanted to."

 

Hastily, I shoved my hands onto his chest. It was hot beneath me, hot and bony. It was more like I was pushing him than anything else, and he grabbed my hands and pressed them closer into him as he moved closer into me.

 

"Good," he whispered, leaning in again. "Now you have to move them."

 

I nodded, lessening the pressure I was exerting on him to skim my hands down over his ribs. They felt like bird bones, like it would be possible for them to snap with just the slightest wrong movement. I ran my hands up and down along his sides, clueless to anything else. I had never touched someone else before, outside of handshakes and the intersection of fingers when slipping change and bills back and forth. I heard Frank exhale in frustration and grab harder at my hands, mashing them into his sides, running them down over his hips, along his back. He dragged my hands down to his rear, then ordered me to squeeze. I complied, relishing in awe the feeling of how hot and soft his bottom was. It was a cushioned contrast to how scrawny the rest of his body was. I wondered how it was possible that he could be so thin after always eating so much. Clearly, the bulk of the fat was traveling downwards and filling out that lower space. It was different from me, with a flat ass and all of my own fat wobbling around above it, love handles tapering down into nothing.

 

Frank reached for that nothingness next. As I squeezed hard at him in surprise, he was groping at me in between the space left by the chair. I whimpered a little bit, shoving my face into his neck in embarrassment. Frank continued to bite and lick at my neck, squeeze and grope at the doughy skin beneath my clothes, and then I was yelping loudly into the crook of skin occupying his neck, My pants became soggy and I was panting heavily into Frank's skin. I noticed that he was clammy, just like me, but there was little time to notice--not with the haste that Frank pushed himself off of me. I looked up at him, helplessly, to notice that he was sneering down at me.

 

"Couldn't even get it out, Jesus Christ. You're like a fuckin' sixth grader," he snorted. "All I have to do is look at you and you cum."

 

He flung his face into mine after that comment, exclaiming a childish "boo!" I screeched a little bit and nearly fell backwards out of the chair. Frank just laughed at me. "See? You're a fuckin easy trigger."

 

"I'm sorry," I said quietly, looking down at the large stain spreading out in my pants.

 

"You should be. You're fuckin' pathetic."

 

"W-what..is there...can I do anything? F-for you?" I asked desperately.

 

Frank looked at me, skeptically. "Go home and make out with your pillow or something. Or go feel up another fifteen year old boy. Lemme know when you know what to fuckin' do."

 

I looked down at his crotch, hesitantly. Nothing was pushing out of his small underpants. "S-so, y-you want me to..."

 

"Go the fuck home, right now. I was hoping you'd get me off, but seeing your stupid fat face is just pissing me off right now."

 

"I'm sorry."

 

"Shut up. Seriously, go home. You're just annoying me now."

 

"But--do you, do--"

 

"Leave."

 

I did as he told me.

 


	10. Chapter 10

I sputtered and raged at myself the entire drive home, my own voice rising over the radio and bouncing off the windows to rattle around inside of my car. I had screwed up. I had been given an opportunity, a privilege, and I had completely spoiled it. Frank had trusted me to manage, but I hadn't managed at all. He'd wanted me to draw him, and I hadn't succeeded in the least. I had tossed my sketchbook into the backseat of my car, not wanting to remember the scraggled lines I had etched across paper while still in his room. Before he had come on to me, and before I had embarrassed myself in front of him like I had.

I squeezed my eyes shut at a stop light, working hard to remember what had just conspired until a car behind me angrily honked to push me forward. That was my greatest issue with myself. I couldn't remember what I had done. Rather, I couldn't remember what we had done, what he and I had participated in simultaneously. I touched my fingers to the skin of my stomach, crawling underneath my shirt to try and replicate the feeling his small hands had created on the flesh there. All I felt was my own fat. I drew my hand out in frustration, not wanting to touch myself. My entire body had become offensive to me.

Frank had felt so much different than I did. My own body being the only one I'd ever really touched before, Frank was the greatest contrast I could've encountered. He was shorter than me, of course, and half my width. His wrist bones, delicate and bony, poked through the barely opaque white of his wrists. I had seen them out of the corner of my eye when he was moving his hands all over the place. His fingers weren't long, but they too were slim and bony. Their grace and dexterity were yet another opposite to my clumsy, fat hands.I looked at them clutching the steering wheel, resenting the way they spread out like bloated pancakes. 

But, for whatever reason, Frank had still let me touch him. Not really for "whatever" reason. I knew the reason. Frank had told me himself, that it had been fulfilling the half hearted promise he had dropped in my lap at the shopping mall the other day. Frank saw it as an agreement, some sort of monetary policy. But I didn't want that to be the case. If I was given the license to touch him, to observe him freely in return for some items, then so be it. I could deal with that. But it didn't change the fact that I wanted Frank to actually want me around for the sake of me simply being...me.

That was out of the question, of course. I couldn't "get him off," and I knew that succeeding in that act was probably the most important thing one could do within a relationship. I didn't know if that was the way to label Frank and I. There was something there, certainly. There couldn't not be, not with all the time we shared with one another.There were hours between us. Maybe, if I counted all of the hours together in my head, they would add up to days, even a month. The time I had spent actually with Frank, actually interacting with Frank, was far shorter than anything else. But the time I'd spent looking at Frank, contemplating his presence, was far more extensive. And I knew that the time Frank could've ever spent thinking about me was far reduced.

It was late when I pulled into my driveway, and my house lights were all turned off. I kicked my shoes off to reduce the noise I made as I slunk down to the basement, wading my way through the mess on my floor to get to my bed. As usual, I collapsed there alone. It was only a twin size, half the expanse of Frank's wider bed. There was space for me there, I thought. But there was no space for Frank in my bed. It made sense. Frank didn't belong as a presence in my life. He wasn't pushing any permanence to enter the intricacies of my pitiful job and my even more pitiful grades. Rather, I was just given the temporary privilege of being in Frank's life.I didn't know how temporary that privilege was.

Looking up, I saw that there was a small window above my bed, too. It was the same as the one hovering in the upper corner of Frank's room, the one I was always forced to crawl through when I visited him. My window was covered over by cobwebs, though. There were no visitors batting their way through the spiderwebs to tumble down into my bed. I sighed, rolling over to hug my pillow. My pants had dried and rubbed crusty against my thighs. I squeezed my eyes shut. It was disgusting, but I wouldn't change my pants. These were the pants that Frank had rolled and rubbed himself all over. I moved a hand down to my thigh to set it down, to touch the fabric that Frank had marked with himself. I squeezed my pillow tighter, pulling it down a little bit to try and replicate how Frank had felt in my lap. My pillow didn't bear the same weight as Frank, nor did it replicate how warm--how hot he had been. He'd been burning up on me.

I was uncomfortable at best, thinking about the memory. I could mostly just remember how badly I had screwed up--unfortunate for multiple reasons. I was stuck in the embarrassment of my own actions, for one, and I couldn't remember the exact details of how Frank had been, for another. I was squeezing my fingernails into my palms, trying so hard to remember what his skin had felt like. How smooth and hot it had been, and nearly hairless, too. I remembered the color of his underpants, and the instinct to get up and draw shot through me--to duplicate the exact shade of blue they had been, in contrast with the flushed pink of his thighs. I had drawings I needed to complete besides Frank, and I had drawings of Frank tumbling around in my head that I needed to complete, of course. But Frank had sent me home with another assignment.

"Go home and make out with your pillow," Frank had said. It was crude to think about, but it wasn't as though I had never engaged in such an act before. There had been several acts that I could look back on, mostly ending in going to sleep sweaty, on an equally sticky pillowcase. Frank had directed me to do it, though. So I didn't have a choice. I didn't have any objections, that wasn't the case. I was jus trapped within the memory of my own embarrassment. I sat up though, scooting back against the headboard of my bed--the same one that had been attached to it since childhood. It was scratched and dented, and the rungs of it dug into my back. I sat straight through, willing myself to pretend it was just a chair. The chair in Frank's bedroom, specifically.

I then brought the pillow onto my lap, trying to position it the same way that Frank had been straddling me in the confines of his own basement.The pillow flopped over, mirroring the own defeat I felt in myself already. I straightened it up, though, and tentatively wrapped my arms around it. It was thin and cold, and didn't serve as the best stand-in for Frank. It was nothing I couldn't handle, but I couldn't say that it encouraged me to press forward. I did press forward, though, pressing my hands into the pillow and pretending that I could feel the bumps of Frank's spine and the grooves of his ribcage. The memory of those actual bones stirred in my guts, and I sighed a little bit, nudging my head into the pillow and squeezing it tighter.

Frank and I hadn't actually kissed, not during our encounter earlier today--nor at any time before that. Guessing that kissing was something I should probably work on, I carefully took the pillow in my hands and brought it towards my face, mashing my mouth into the dingy light blue of the pillowcase. It didn't feel like Frank, it felt a little damp and smelled like mildew. I dealt with it, though, letting my tongue fall out of my mouth to slide across the surface of the case. I cringed at the taste, but it was for practice. For Frank. While I continued to slobber on the upper half, I slide my hands around on the rest of it. I guided it down into my hips, giving them a little push upwards into it. I was soft, but I knew that when this turned into me in the real Frank, I'd be far, far on the opposite side of the spectrum.

I started to think more about Frank, as the memories of what he had been like began to flood back to me. I felt myself stiffen in my crunchy pants again, and I let out a little whimper into the pillow. My hands started to move faster, and for those next few minutes, the pillow was Frank. I was trying to take in as much as I could, biting at feathers and feeling his skin, inhaling dust and smelling the sweet tinge of his sweat. I gasped out a little as I ground my front harder into the pillow, squeezing it tight as I felt sensation building in my guts, overwhelmed by the rerun of the evening flashing before my eyes. My pants were then overcome by new stains, and I gave my last exhale and rolled over, collapsing onto and flattening the pillow. 

Before falling asleep, sufficiently dreamed, I thought about what I would tell Frank when I saw him tomorrow. I would tell Frank that I had done just what he had told me. I would tell him that I was ready for my second chance.


	11. Chapter 11

Frank was sneering and smirking when he came in the next day, as he always was. Today, though, he was quick to ask me if I had done my laundry when he sauntered up to the counter. He asked if this meant I was finally going to change my pants. To make that question more pointed, he even leaned over the counter and cackled at the fact that I was wearing the same pants as yesterday. He sputtered about being able to see the stain, asked if they were crunchy. The stain wasn't even there. I had checked. But he continued to make more jokes in the same vein after that, asking for extra cream in his coffee, asking for extra mayo on his sandwich. He ate slowly to start, and then when he caught me really looking he gobbled it up quickly, covering his face in a mess of condiments

"You like doing things fast, huh Gerald?" he asked, licking at a smear of mayo in the corner of his lip.

"It's Gerard..." I mumbled. I knew he knew my name. He was just deliberately letting it slide.

"There's some Gerard on my bedroom floor. Didn't quite make it to my sheets, though. You tried, I guess."

"S-sorry." I didn't really want to deal with this at the moment. I felt bad enough without the humiliation on top of it.

"Bet your bedroom has a lot of you on it, huh?" he asked, picking one of the slices of cheese out of his sandwich and flicking it at me. It hit the front of my apron, sliding down the coarse black fabric and leaving a trail of mayonnaise in its wake. 

I didn't respond to what he said. I just grabbed a paper towel, cleaning the mess off of me the best I could. A large, half formed stain remained there, looking even more like semen after the mayo had been removed. I wasn't the only one to make this connection. Frank noticed, too. He was covering his face with his hand, laughing silently. I crumpled up the paper towel and threw it away hastily. Of course, it missed the trash can by a long shot. It could be said that I was missing the mark, too, as it seemed like the conversation was derailing as quickly as it had begun. Things were off today. I could feel that they were off. Something was wrong. We weren't talking like we normally did. It was probably my fault.

"C-can I come over again tonight? C-can I try again?" I stammered.

"Tonight? No fuckin' way." Frank snorted.

"B-but, but I did what you told me! I-I, I went home and I, I t-t-t....I t-t..."

"You touched yourself? Are you fuckin' serious?" Frank gaped at me, letting his sandwich plop down on the counter.

"W-w-w-well, y-you...you t-told me..."

"Gross." Frank huffed, shoving the remains of his food across the table back at me. "That's gross."

"B-but you told me..."

"Bet you were thinking about me the whole time, huh? About last night, what you might've done if you hadn't spurted in your pants?" Frank's voice was rising by the second, getting more and more outraged.

"W-well I w-was, but..."

"Do you have pictures of me taped above your bed? Huh? You got a fuckin' collage to whack off to?"

"N-no, I was just...just, th-thinking about you. It was all, all in my h-head." I tried to explain to him.

"God, shut up." Frank rolled his eyes. "You're not coming over tonight."

"W-what if I..."

"And you don't have any money, so don't say you can buy me stuff. I know you can't."

"You--"

"I know when you get paid." Frank scoffed, plucking an apple from the display case and biting into it loudly. He made a face, chucking it back into the basket, the red skin of it shining with spit. I grabbed it, flinging it into the trash can. "It's not hard to track that shit. Every other Tuesday. Seven-twenty-five an hour. Bam. There you go."

"How did--"

"Well, you remember all that creepy shit about me, so you can draw me. I can remember shit about you, too. Except, yknow, useful shit instead of what your stupid fucking face looks like."

"Are y-you sure I c-can't...can't come over?"

"I'm positive." Frank said as he got up from the counter, zipping up his coat and walking out of the store.

"Frank, please!" I shouted as he was almost out the door. He didn't turn around.

The door shut with a jingle, as it always did. I leaned down on the counter, burying my face in my hands. I had screwed up, again. But I didn't understand how. I had done exactly what he'd asked of me. I had tried really hard to follow his directions, and I thought I had done something right for once. I thought Frank would be proud of me. I had wanted Frank to be proud of me. I wanted to do something, something other than just buying him things, that would make him happy. But it hadn't. It had made him mad, if anything. It seemed like he was mad, at least. Maybe he was just "jostling" me. I could hope that maybe that was the case.

While driving home, I checked the time on my cell phone at the stop light. I wished, suddenly, that I had Frank's phone number. After all this time, I had still never even thought to ask for his number. It would certainly make things easier, if I did have that.. I could call him, I realized, and ask him for a second chance. I could call him anytime at all. I could be speaking to him right now, right here in my car, or any other time I wanted to at all, and I would never have to wonder where he was, or what he was doing. I could send him a text message, like the one I had just received from my parents. Mom was asking me to pick up bread on the way home. I sighed, putting my phone back down. I didn't have the guts to send a reply through the wires that would explain why I was broke. I knew she wouldn't understand me spending my money on Frank. I knew she wouldn't understand Frank in the first place, not like I could ever say it at all. I knew there were consequences, based on the years separating us, based on the things we were doing with each other even now, even in their small degrees.

The consequences didn't matter to me, though. It wasn't as though I was unaware of them, it was just that they didn't matter. I could work around them. I could work my way around them. I had been thinking about the consequence more and more recently, though. But that just led to me getting smarter about this. I was taking more measures to hide my sketchbooks, and before Frank had spent my last paycheck, I had invested in a safe. To keep them all stowed away, and to keep my mother from finding them. It wasn't as though she ever went into my room, or down into the basement at all, but I couldn't hep being worried. I couldn't help wanting to be careful. Just in case. Aside from that, the case was fireproof as well. Mikey had set the microwave on fire a couple weekends ago, and after the fire alarm had shrieked through the house for an hour, I couldn't help but make an investment in my paranoia. I kept the code memorized in my head, and I turned the numbers over and over again in my mind.

The safe wasn't the only I had also needed to pick up a new sketchbook the other day. It was for homework assignments, this one was. It was also a less incriminating book to carry around, with my books containing Frank remaining home from now on. I had to hide my drawings of Frank. I just knew that I had to hide them. Not that there wasn't a lot of other material that would wind up filling up said sketchbooks. I had work to do. Work for school. Especially since Frank wasn't having me over tonight, especially since I was behind once again, I was going to need to chip away at my homework, to fill up pages and pages with everything but Frank. One of my teachers had given me an explicit ban on drawing "that boy" anymore. But drawing other things, I supposed it was at least something to do. I had piles and piles of work, as usual. When things were like they were now, when I saw Frank two days in a row and he denied me the chance to visit him each time I asked, it ensured that I had plenty of hours to spend crossing mundane assignments off of the never-ending list I had built up. I would pass all my classes, at least. Now that I was doing work, I knew I would pass. My F's were now strong, round C's. That wasn't really exciting to me, though. I would rather scrawl the rest of Frank's name after a million "Fs" if it meant that I could spend all my hours with Frank.

There wasn't much time left in the semester when I thought about it. Valentine's day had passed two days ago, with nothing at all happening between me and Frank. All I had done was tear down the streamers of hearts that had been taped up all around the restaurant and change out the novelty items on the menu. But I hadn't expected to do anything with Frank for the holiday. I knew we weren't officially in any kind of romantic relationship, not like my brother and his girlfriend. They had gone out to dinner, and Mikey had left a note on the take out box of leftovers in the fridge. "For Gerard," the note read. I had a romantic Valentine's dinner alone in my basement with a box of cold spaghetti. It became more traditionally romantic, I supposed, when I made good on my promise to Frank to "practice." I kept telling him that I was practicing, each time that I saw him. He sounded revolted with me every single time as well. I wanted him to realize that I was doing what he had been telling me to. I wanted him to realize that I would do whatever it took until I would finally be good enough to allow to touch him again.

On Valentine's Day, I had given him a huge stack of heart-shaped cookies inside of a plastic bag. He had rolled his eyes, like he always did at me, but taken them and started in on eating them immediately. I hadn't asked any questions regarding the nature of our relationship. I had only asked if I could see him that night. Of course, though, he denied me. He said he had plans already. So when I spent my cold night alone, slobbering into spaghetti, I couldn't help but wonder what his plans were. The food settled icily in my gut as I wondered if maybe he was seeing someone else, seeing someone like Mikey was seeing Alice. Alicia. Whatever her name was. Frank had been seeing me so much that I wondered if he really had time for anyone else. But then I realized all the hours he spent at school, the hours after he dropped in to take his meals from me, the weekends, too. I really hardly ever saw him at all. I shouldn't be surprised that he had a life outside of me.

I wanted to know about that life so, so badly, though. There were the few hours I was allowed to see him, but they were waning again. I didn't know what I had to do to get Frank to donate more of his time to me again. The only thing I could really do was wonder about what he did in his free time. I could really only fabricate a life for him, in my head and in my drawings. So I drew Frank in different settings, or I at least drew settings for my homework assignments and then inserted him into them later on. Not in sketches, but in my head at least. When I had to draw objects, I imagined Frank holding the objects. When I had to draw buildings, parks, animals, Frank was standing in them, standing near them, holding kittens in his hands and dogs on leashes. The drawings I made without him were never as good as the drawings of him. Maybe my talents were limited to rendering only his face, not much else. But then, I wondered, what would happen if I could no longer draw him?

Frank was already starting to limit me. He was cutting down hours, and getting distant. Or at least I felt like he was. He was coming up with more creative insults, picking at more individual parts of my appearance. I supposed that meant he was noticing me more. He had to be, if he was able to criticize how my nose looked like a pig snout. Even I had never paid my face that much attention. It wasn't really worth looking at, not like Frank's was. I had memorized each speck of it so well that I didn't need to look at him to draw him anymore. I hadn't needed to for a while. It had been a long, long time since I had needed to stare at him from the back corners of the deli. I don't think that I could forget him even if I made the effort to do so. Which was good, I figured. Just in case anything ever happened.

But nothing would ever happen, I quickly reassured myself. Frank could have cut ties with me long ago, if he had really wanted to. There had been plenty of time before. The problem was starting to form in the fact that there wasn't much time left. The semester for me ended in May. School ended for him in June. I didn't know if I would see him anymore after that. I wasn't even sure if I would keep seeing him until then. I just had to hope. I had to hope with constant, bitter courage. It was the best I could do. If I just kept doing what he told me, if I kept practicing, then maybe I would eventually be good enough for him. I knew there was a guarantee that I would see him soon, though. I knew that soon I would have another chance with Frank. I had a paycheck in the future. As much as it sickened me, I knew that the cash to soon line my pockets was a guarantee that Frank would be tugging at my pants to get to those pockets soon enough.

I could count on that.


	12. Chapter 12

My paycheck didn't arrive on time the next week. I had been obsessively checking my bank account all day, but it remained empty. I was checking it online even as Frank walked into the door that day, refreshing and refreshing the bank page on the computer behind the counter. It took me a little while to even notice Frank, the chiming of the bell having passed through my ears without my attention. He had to cough in irritation before I was even aware of him leaning on the counter.

"Sorry! Sorry!" I exclaimed as I quickly tore myself away from the computer and went to get started on his order.

Frank was silent as I set his food in front of him, picking a leaf of lettuce out of the sandwich and noncommittally nibbling on it. He didn't say anything as he continued to make his way through his food, eating slowly, and I turned my head down to check my bank account again, and then to fetch a rag to start mopping up a spill I had created earlier. I peeked at him every other second, hoping that perhaps he would look back at me and speak. He kept his eyes downward, didn't even twitch in my direction.

"So do you want to come over?" he finally said.

"Do I what?" I said, taken aback. 

"Come over. Do you or don't you want to? My parents aren't home tonight." he said quietly, raising his eyebrows up at me. His eyes were tired. He looked exhausted.

"I--um, of course I would. I-I would, l-love to--"

"Okay, yeah. Cool. I'll see you later, I guess," he sighed, getting up from the counter and pushing his stool in. His half eaten sandwich sat soggy in the counter amidst all of his other trash, and I couldn't do anything except scoop it up and throw it away as Frank shuffled out the door.

Something was wrong with him. He had been growing progressively more reserved the past few days, and today had been the worst of all. He was wearing his school clothes each day, which meant he hadn't bothered changing into his preferred outfits after school like he normally did. I saw his khaki pants and the collar of his shirt peeking through his jacket, and his eyelids drooping farther downwards each day above it. He wasn't sick, as far as I knew. He wasn't exhibiting a single symptom. But he wasn't well, either. He definitely was not well at all. I hoped that perhaps, perhaps when I came over that night, I would be able to do something to make him feel better.

When I did get there that night, Frank let me in through the front door. He was in pajama pants and an old t-shirt that I had never seen on him before. It had a sports logo on the front. When he had led me through his dark hallways and down the stairs to his room, he shut the door and locked it tight behind us. He told me it was "just in case" and then gave me a once over with his eyes.

"Gonna do a better job this time?" he asked coolly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"A-at...at drawing you?" I asked tentatively, clutching my bag. 

"Is that what you wanna do?" 

Frank stepped closer to me, the top of his head skimming my chin. He was so small. Frank gave the front of my sweatshirt a sharp tug, dragging me closer to him. "You wanna show me that you practiced?" he whispered. Frank clearly wasn't interested in drawings.

All of my worries of him being sick evaporated. The room was dim, but Frank sounded plenty healthy, and plenty awake. His hands were balled up in the fabric of my sweatshirt, and he shifted us so that I was pinning him against the wall. I heard him laugh a little bit, and he knocked his leg against my groin. I was hard already by that point, but I bit my lip. I pushed him back, just a little bit, taking deep breaths to try and steady myself. I had practiced this. I had practiced holding off those nights in my basement, and I was going to hold off now. "Frankie," I gasped, trying to steady my breathing.

"What the fuck did I tell you about calling me that?" Frank growled, pressing his leg hard into me. It hurt a little bit, and I supposed that was his intention.

"Frank. Frank, sorry. Sorry, sorry, Frank, Frank...here." I whimpered before I finally put both of my hands on the side of Frank's cool, soft cheeks and kissed him.

Our teeth bumped together, and I felt his lips slide apart and his teeth clack against mine. He made a small groan in protest, and I pulled back a little bit, keeping contact against his mouth. I felt Frank's mouth open wider, and heard him make a different sound as he shoved his tongue into my mouth. I opened my mouth, too, by gut instinct more than anything else. His tongue was hot and slippery, darting around quickly once in my mouth, smearing itself over the insides of my cheeks. For a second I was scared I would swallow it.

He pulled back briefly, panting and wiping spit off of the corners of his mouth. "You're a fucking terrible kisser."

"You're my first," I said softly.

"I can tell," he said before diving back into my mouth, grinding his front against me and pinching at my sides. 

I could feel my fat being squeezed beneath his fingers, his short little nails snagging in my skin. "You're so fuckin' fat," he scowled in between kisses, biting at my neck and even stretching up to take my earlobe between his teeth, pinching it hard enough to make me gasp out into his mouth. He laughed at that. "Like that, fatass? Like having someone eat you, 'stead of just having you eat fuckin' Cheetos all alone?"

"Frank," I gasped again, trying to position my hands somewhere on his body, trying to steady him and myself although he was practically writhing against me.

"What, what do you want?" he asked, shoving his hands down into the front pockets of my pants, pulling me in closer to him. My head was spinning and I had to bite my lip to compose myself, to keep from making my mistake from before.

"I wanna touch you," I said, too quiet.

"You wanna what?" he asked, sliding a hand around to squeeze at my rear. "Wanna what?"

I clenched my teeth together more firmly, squeezing my eyes shut as I sputtered out at him, "wanna touch you and make you hot!" It had been a line I'd heard in one of the many videos I had looked up as part of my research, but it clearly wasn't a good thing to quote. Frank pulled away from me, bursting out laughing.

"You, you what?" he pushed out, barely managing the words through his giggles. I was left to slump against the wall, holding my hands awkwardly down in front of me as he folded into himself with laughter. "Oh man, oh that's--that's fuckin'--"

"I'm sorry," I pleaded. "I just...I wanted..."

"You what? Holy shit, did you look through your mom's porno novels?"

"N-no, I--I looked--I researched!"

"You researched?" Frank asked, catching his breath between residual bursts of laughter. "You researched what, how to sound like even more of a retard?"

"No, I--h-how, how...how, boys do...things to each other," I managed. "H-how, to, to do p-p-p-penis things."

"Penis things? Penis things? Are you serious?"

"I didn't want to mess up so I looked up, h-how to, to make l-l-love to m-men, a-a-a-and--"

"Oh my god, please stop talking. Please stop talking before you make my dick fuckin' fall off from getting so soft. Jeeeeesus Christ," Frank drawled. "You looked up how to fuck dudes. Awesome. Maybe you should do something about it, huh?"

"D-do y-y-you?"

"I dunno, maybe you'd be better off just going home and shoving your nuts back into your pillow. That's what you've been doin' all week, right?"

"I've--"

"God, look," Frank said, grabbing my hand and tugging me away from the door, leading me to his bed. He flopped down, sprawling out on the sheets while I was left standing at the side. I noticed that there remained a bulge in his pajama pants. He wasn't soft. I knew I wasn't soft either, but him staying up had to count for something. "If you're gonna get me off, get me off," he continued. "Do it," he said as he squirmed up on his pillows, stretching his arms behind his head.

I looked at him once before ducking my head down, crawling onto the mattress to sit beside him. I shook my hair in front of my face, rolling the sleeves of my sweatshirt up a little bit. I knew that sexual things went in a certain order. Since Frank and I hadn't done a lot of sexual things yet, I understood that we were supposed to start with touching each other's private parts. Frank was silent as I reached out my hand, pushing up the hem of his t-shirt to pet at the skin right above his hips. He didn't make a sound as my hand crept downward, sliding just below the waistband of his pants. My fingers grazed a rough patch, and I realized that I was touching Frank's pubic hair. It was sparse but rough, and it felt so much shorter than mine did. I realized he may have trimmed it down. Something I never did. Something I had never even thought of doing.

Keeping my head down, continuing to sit politely on his bed next to him, I squeezed my eyes shut tight and grabbed his penis, squeezing it in my hand gently. I heard him inhale sharply, and I was frozen for a minute. I could feel the weight of him in my hand, and I could feel the wet fabric of his boxers stretched over the back of my hand. My own underwear was soggy, as it always got whenever I found myself in these situations with Frank, but I wouldn't think that me being around him could possibly trigger the same reaction. I shook myself out of my thoughts, though, and I slowly started moving my hand up and down. They did it a lot faster in the videos that I watched, but I didn't think I was capable of moving my arm that quickly. Nor was I capable of overcoming my nerves.

Frank shifted his hips underneath my hand, pushing them up and making a small whimper as I skimmed the tip of his penis--the "head" of his "dick," that's what I was supposed to call it. "Is that um, good?" I asked him hesitantly.

"S'okay," Frank said, sounding somewhat out of breath.

"Am I--like, am, am I--"

"Just shut up and keep going."

I did as he said, saying nothing as I tried speeding up the movements of my hand a little bit. He reacted well to that, at least from the noises he started making. They sounded like the videos I looked up, and when I dared to steal a glance of his face, it was making the same "o" that so many of the men in the pictures I looked up had been making. His breathing was getting heavier above me, and I kept my thoughts away from the sounds he was making, away from the ache in my own pants, and focused instead on the method I had practiced in my room. There was a real "cock" in my hands now, not just a cucumber, but I kept up with the same hand movements I had repeated over and over again on the vegetable I'd practiced with.

"Shit," I heard Frank say.

"What, what? Is something wrong?" I asked, horrified. Maybe I had just moved my hand the wrong way, or maybe I was doing it completely wrong. "Should I stop?"

"No, shit, keep going. Keep going, go faster," he said. His voice sounded higher, more held back than usual. It was missing its usual confident sneer, for sure.

I complied, going as fast as I could, feeling the fat of my arm wobbling sweaty inside the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Frank was getting louder above me, and just as I realized how vocal he had become, his hips bucked upwards and my hand was suddenly more slippery than it had been with only Frank's pre-come. There was real come now. Or maybe it was cum, I couldn't remember what the correct sexy word to use for it was. My hand was sloppy with it, and when I pulled my hand away from Frank, leaving him soft and panting on the bed, I saw in the dim light that there were huge globules of it sticking to my hand. Smearing it around in my palm, I quickly wiped it on my hoodie. Frank was still too tired to notice, staring aimlessly at the wall. He didn't see the stains that I was leaving, the memory of this important event that I would be sure to remember later.

"Um, Frank?" I asked.

"Wha?" he said, his voice still just a step away from a moan. His breathing had slowed down a lot, and his eyelids were drooping.

"Um, w-what happens now?"

"I'unno."

"Do I--"

"Go home, I guess. I'unno," he grumbled, patting the front of his pants and pulling his hand away from the wet spot in disgust.

"G-go home?" I asked, stunned. "D-did I do something w-wrong?"

"No."

"Then--"

"Just go the fuck home. Take your creepy boner and leave," Frank snapped, burrowing into his bed and abruptly tugging the blankets over himself. He laid still for a moment before shifting around underneath the covers, making sparse noises of frustration before he surfaced again with pants in hand, tossing them to the floor beside his bed. My penis twitched at the thought that Frank was sleeping naked tonight. I was still up, and I hadn't made a mess of myself like I had the other night. I was contained, and that surely had to count for something.

"Frank, I--a-are you s-s-sure--"

"Just go! Jesus shit, my...my parents will be home soon. Or something. Go away," he huffed, putting his pillow over his head.

So I obeyed him as always, awkwardly crawling out of his small basement window, managing the discomfort in my pants with a misguided gait until I got back to my car. There I got rid of the nagging pain, the aching feeling caused by a build up of too much blood and not enough Frank. There was a little bit of Frank still left on my hand, despite most of it smeared on my hoodie. And while I quickly touched myself to success, fogging up the windows of my car alone, I realized that it wasn't quite enough. Before it would've been more than enough, back when I was still catching as much of Frank in the wind as I could manage. But now, now that I was having so much of Frank, it was starting to become not enough at all. I was getting greedy, but I couldn't help it.

I needed all of Frank now. Not just bits and pieces.


	13. Chapter 13

I couldn't sleep that night. I ripped off my shirt as soon as I returned home to the dingy interior of my basement, groping for a coat hanger in the mess of my closet. I put my semen-stained sweatshirt upon it, carefully balancing it from the curtain rail of my window. It was dark, but even despite that, it would maintain the darkness with its black fabric even when the sun threatened to enter my room. The sun wasn't welcome here. I never saw Frank in daylight, and so I wanted nothing to do with the daylight. Daylight was only something I was greeting after sleepless nights, nights like this one that were spent running my hands over my face, over all the parts of my body that I could. I was saturated in Frank. My mouth was still coated with his spit, still full of Frank's fluids. I started licking my palms, licking the fabric of my sweatshirt, just barely tasting the bitter remnants of what had to be his ejaculate. My mouth filled with cotton when I sucked his remnants out of my shirt, but for once it was literal and not metaphorical.

I was allowed to touch Frank. My past experience was just proof. I had nothing to be afraid of anymore.

I skipped school the next morning, waiting until work, waiting until the time that I knew I would see him again. For the first time in forever, I pulled the tarp off of my dusty painting supplies, and smeared colors and shapes around all over the place. It was "abstract," something that conveniently was required for one of my classes. A painting that said nothing, showed nothing, but held everything within it. There was the beige of Frank's carpet, the gray, dim light of his room, the blue of his pajamas and a bright, streaking white running through the entire piece. That was obvious enough, as to what it was. I hadn't slacked completely in art history. White was hope, white was light, white was perfect and white was everything people wanted. Frank was making my life whiter, not just spots on my sweatshirt. Things weren't entirely black anymore, not like they used to be. I was even wishing that I had more variety in my clothes, the means necessary to express my happiness through outfitting myself in brightness.

The sun was bright once I left for work, midday with the paint drying in my basement. My professors always said that nothing good could come out of anything that was drawn quickly, but they didn't understand the way that I worked. They didn't understand that Frank sparked things in me that their lectures could never, ever manage. I was humming with the radio on the way to work, and the fact that I couldn't carry a tune was irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant except Frank. Frank, who was finally giving me attention, moments of his time that covered all the meat in my brain and the skin of my hands, down to the grime under my fingernails. I was soaking myself in the leftover muddle of Frank on me. Frank felt like he was on me permanently, not just in remnants of touches forgotten. Not that I would forget them anytime soon at all.

I knew he wouldn't arrive until much later, but my enthusiasm for work wasn't dampened. I was bouncing on my heels behind the counter, tapping my fingers all over the place, jittering and dropping anything that I picked up. So much had changed in a mere twenty-four hours. I ran the scene over in my head time after time, minute after minute as I waited for Frank. I spilled coffee and hot chocolate over the counter, and I could tell that there were at least some customers that were becoming infuriated, but my apologies served to be enough for them as I remade their orders. My stomach soared when I realized that Frank hadn't demanded an apology from me. He said it was all right.

Certainly, last night hadn't been perfect. I understood that things like that were supposed to be mutual, from all of the videos I researched. When people did things, they were supposed to do them to each other. It wasn't really supposed to go that one person "got off" the other, and then left. Or, more bluntly, was kicked out. But I justified it in many facts. There were a lot of facts that did justify what happened. I was just lucky that Frank let me touch him at all. And aside from that, Frank kissed me. I knew that people didn't kiss each other unless they had feelings for each other. Frank could have had me just touch him, move my hand in his pants until he finished off. But he didn't. Frank had pulled me close against him, with more than just his body. More than what he had granted me the other night. Frank had opened up his mouth to mine, and our tongues touching, our saliva mixing, said a great deal about Frank in regards to me. Frank opening his mouth to me was as good as him opening up his entire life. He wanted me around. That wasn't difficult to doubt now.

It wasn't as though Frank hadn't effectively served to bring me to coming, either. He had. He had many times, periodically on the hours between me leaving for work and me having left his house the other night. I had been touching myself at every chance I got, smothering my genitals with my Frank-covered hands until finishing myself hurt, until no white material was left to shoot out of me. It began to hurt, it began to ache when I came, squeaking Frank's name into my pillow. But I couldn't stop thinking about him. The thoughts of last night did not cease for an instant to fill up my mind with fantasies of what had already happened, of what might happen next, of how everything had felt. Him touching me, me touching him.

I licked the insides of my cheeks with my tongue, simulating Frank's tongue skidding inside my mouth. I had shut my eyes tight so many times while rolling around in my sheets, grabbing roughly at my sides and pinching them in the same way he had. My fat fingers didn't compare to his nimble digits, but the sensation was close enough. I noticed tiny bruises forming on me when I changed into my work shirt, and I shivered upon realizing that it was likely Frank who had marked me. Frank had left his own form of proof, black and blue on my skin. I delicately touched the mark, a dainty pinch that had to have been left behind by him.

Thinking about Frank, thinking about the events before pushed me up again at work. It was aching at this point, practically raw due to the frequency that I, myself had attacked it with. I couldn't help it. I was glad for the counter shielding me, though, namely as so many customers were coming through today. It would be bad business to impose my erection on patrons. There were plenty of people like that in New Jersey, but I wasn't one of them. Besides, I didn't need the public to take any interest in my penis. Frank had made it clear that he had at least some interest in what lurked beneath my khakis. 

Well, technically, Frank hadn't shown interest. He had molested my sides, my chest, my ass, my face--but never my frontal organ. He had left that alone. But surely there had to be interest. If he had granted me access to his, then that must imply that he was at least interested in other men. I may have neutral genitalia, for the time being, but my hands were too large, too rough, too meaty overall to even pass for girl hands. And Frank certainly dressed in the manner of all the eccentric homosexuals that I saw on my mother's soap operas. He had very tight pants. I wasn't sure if that was just the "punk" fashion, though. I supposed it could be.

Trying to figure out the logistics of everything regarding Frank was distracting at best, and during work I was also distracted at best. It was the sharp dinging of the service bell on the counter that snapped me back to my senses, and I quickly snapped back to my normal persona of "how may I help you." The person I was serving did not take kindly to my demeanor, though. I normally slid easily through customers' good graces, but today wasn't one of those times. Despite being as meek as I always was, this customer was angry with everything I did. They snapped their order at me, barked at me to hurry up, and when a slosh of coffee spilled out of their cup before I could properly secure a lid on it, they turned to verbal, expletive-laden abuse.

"Piece of shit!" they yelled, earning the attention of a young teenage couple sitting in the corner and sharing a late lunch. "Can't even fucking do your job, retarded asshole, how the fuck did you even get hired? Seen your sorry shit-face here for months, you still--"

"Excuse me!" my manager interrupted, brushing a stray piece of hair out of her face before setting her hands firmly on her wide-set hips. "Is there a problem here?" she asked, turning to me before him. I stared at her open mouthed, helpless.

"Yeah, I'll tell you the fucking problem. Your piece of shit employee--"

"Is providing you with excellent customer service despite your consistent harping at him. And you are disrupting my establishment as well as the other patrons. He's doing his job. I suggest you find yourself a job to do and get out of my store," she said calmly.

"You fucking bitch, I'll--"

"You'll what?" she asked, striding swiftly behind the counter and raising the receiver of our delivery telephone. "Because if you continue to stand in my store acting the way you are, I'll phone the police."

He stared at her, venom in his eyes, and then slapped the cup across the counter, spitting in the puddle of coffee that the spill created. He zipped up his jacket in one movement, stomping out of the store in the next. The whole store was overcome with silence in his wake before the boyfriend in the corner said something to the effect of, "what was up with him!" and sent everyone else into awkward, yet settling laughter. Things went back to normal after that, with my manager helping me to clean up the mess that the angry man had created.

"We've seen him every day the past week," she sighed. "He always comes in here furious, but Gerard, I apologize. He has never, ever treated an employee as bad as he has treated you."

"O-oh?" I asked, scrubbing the rag across the counter.

"Yes, and I'm so sorry. You've truly been an excellent worker in your time here, and you...Gerard, you are the last person on this staff who deserves to be treated that way. You're really, truly exemplary as an employee."

I blushed, continuing to scrub at the counter.

"--go home."

"W-what?" I asked. I had gotten distracted in my thoughts again, thinking if perhaps I was exemplary to Frank, too.

"I said, it's been a rough day for you, and I would feel awful keeping you here after having to deal with that man. Why don't you take off early? I'm sure you could use a little extra time to relax," she smiled.

"O-oh, but--"

"I insist. Go take off your apron, I'll see you tomorrow."

It was impossible for me to protest. My manager was incredibly kind, but also incredibly forceful. If she wished for me to go home, there was no way that I was going to find myself staying here. There would be no Frank for me, not today. I felt the ache begin in my stomach, the hurt I always felt whenever I was away from Frank. It was always so much worse when I knew I wouldn't be seeing him, that there was no chance at all. Helpless and bored, I drove back to campus. I had already suffered through class this morning, scrawling mediocre sketches of Frank through all of my notes. My teachers had given me some stray comments about how I was "improving." I supposed that was good. I had checked my grades online, and I was even starting to pick up some Bs. 

I was going there now for the sake of using the studio, for the sake of working on some projects. I knew I wouldn't be seeing Frank, and I knew I wouldn't be able to lure myself into sleeping should I go home at all. So I stayed there until two in the morning, long after the janitors started to make their rounds. I covered my clothes in paint, even some white paint, but it couldn't compare to what Frank had painted me in last night. It wasn't even close. I sighed, dusting myself off and slumping into a chair. I had gotten a jump on my work, at least. It would free me up for more future time with Frank--I hoped.

I hoped to see Frank soon. I hated that man, hated him for ruining any meeting I could have had with Frank. Frank counted on me to be at work every day, every day when he was getting off of school. And I had failed to live up to that unspoken promise. I hated that man so much, I wanted to fling back every insult that he had given to me. He was wrong, for one. He was wrong for calling me all of those things, and wrong in double for snatching me away from that counter, that sacred meeting place of Frank and myself. I wasn't bitter, no. Or perhaps I was. There were no words to describe the bubble of rage inside of me, though there were certainly images. I had dabbled in the abstract for the painting I had been working on, and it reflected rage enough. 

That man was not forgiven. He was wrong, and yet, there was something about him, something beyond the limited interaction with me today, that made me frown at his existence even more. I couldn't figure it out though. Perhaps it was a "bad vibe," perhaps it was only the ugly sneer on his face that set me off so much. But there was something very, very wrong with him that extended far past what had happened earlier. I just wish I knew what it was. I hoped I would figure it out soon enough.


	14. Chapter 14

The next night, at around 11:57 eastern standard time, I was lying on my back, half responsible for all the creaking and squeaking that was coming from Frank's mattress.

Frank was thrashing and grinding on top of me, the fabric of our jeans burning between us as he rolled his hips forwards and backwards, down and up, even slithering his hips slowly to the side from time to time. Mostly, though, he was fast. He was fully clothed, as was I, and I could smell the stink of sweat radiating from the stained armpits of his t-shirt. I probably wasn't much better. I could feel my hair sticking to my forehead, the clammy trapped stick of my skin to clothes. I whimpered, shoving my hips up into Frank's and bouncing his small body across where he was straddled across my hips. He made a small startled noise, then shifted his vocal cords into a low moan, grabbing at the worn front of my shirt and balling the fabric inside his fists.

"Frank, I--" I tried to say. 

I couldn't push any words out of my mouth. I wanted to find a way to tell Frank that I wanted out of my clothes, out of their heated prison, and that I wanted to undress him as well. I wanted to take his clothes off fast, hasty, remove all of the trappings that I had drawn over Frank time after time. I wanted the model in its purest form. There was a reason why schools hired nude models. I shivered underneath Frank as we continued to grind our pelvises against each other, trying to slide a hand up under his shirt. He grabbed my hand as soon as I moved it, glaring at me as he steadied himself on my squirming body with his other hand. I felt the heat of his palm spreading across my chest, the pressure of his weight displaced all across me.

"Frank what?" he asked. "What does your fat ass want?"

That wasn't what he had asked me when he had seen me earlier. Earlier today, when he had caught me at my job, he had only leaned over the counter and whispered, "Come over tonight. Want you," before turning on his heel and walking out just as quickly as he had walked in. I was left there stunned with a tent in my pants and anticipation immediately sparked in my gut. After struggling through the remaining hours of the day, I finally made it to his house, just shy of eleven-thirty. He had lured me in through his window, and shoved me against the wall as soon as I slid inside. "Mom and dad are asleep," he had whispered in my ear before licking and sucking at the lobe, "so be quiet." 

I was trying hard to be quiet, I had been keeping my moans short and stifled, covering my mouth with my hand or Frank's skin as best as I could manage. But now Frank was asking me to speak. "I-I want," I struggled again.

"What?"

"I w-w-wanna, want--"

"You wanna suck me off?" he said with a smile on his face, skimming his hand down my torso to skim the waistband of my jeans. 

I gasped at his suggestion, those words combining themselves into a question I had only ever heard asked in pornography before. It was only due to pornography that I knew what Frank was asking of me in the first place, but I found my head bobbing frantically in affirmation of his requests. He smirked again. "Good," he said before rolling off of me, positioning himself on his back beside me and elbowing me out of his space on the mattress.

It was the area he was meant to take up, the space he always took up. I pushed myself up, getting out of his way as he bucked his hips up, frowning slightly as he tugged his pants down over his hips and over his erection. Either he hadn't been wearing any underwear at all, or perhaps he had just tugged them down along with his jeans. Saving time and motions, I thought as he crumpled his clothes up and threw them in the corner of his room as soon as they passed his ankles. His penis--his cock, I thought--was flushed and red, and it was laying swollen against his stomach. I thanked God that Frank had left the light on, thanked everything in the world for the chance to actually see Frank, to not hold him limited in the blue glow of the night. 

"Sh-shirt off," I stuttered out.

"What?" he replied, frowning.

"C-can you, can you take your shirt off?" I asked, more quickly. I was on my knees on front of him at that point, hovering around his calves and looking down over him. He rolled his eyes at me, but obliged, tearing his shirt off swiftly and throwing it in the corner with his jeans.

"That better for you?"

"Y-yeah," I said quietly before I leaned down over his hips. 

I didn't exactly know where to begin, and the short insults coming from Frank above me piled up the pressure. He barked at me to "just fucking go down" on him already, and I dropped my head obediently. I wished that I had some way to tie my hair back, I thought as my mouth skimmed his hip, but as soon as I was sucking skin into my mouth, delicate, sweat-salty, steaming skin, my complaints were forgotten. I gasped against his pelvis as I nosed my way through his pubic hair, sniffing at him as the coarse hairs tickled at my nose. They stood out sharp and black against his skin, and I couldn't help but gasp as I felt my cheek bump into his cock. 

I raised my head slightly, glancing up at Frank. He was looking down at me, straight at me as I lowered my mouth down again, sticking out my tongue to help lure him into my mouth. My lips enveloped him easier than I thought, and I slid down the length of him almost too quickly, gagging a little and gasping as he fell out of my mouth. "Jesus," I heard Frank say before I quickly took him back in my mouth again, sliding my tongue over the soft, dripping tip of his dick. His dick, I thought, another thing that I had heard from pornography.

Frank's "Jesus," of insult turned quickly into an unintelligible moan as I sucked in my cheeks, just like I had seen in the videos I had been watching. I tentatively began to move my head up and down on him again, listening to the sounds of Frank above me. I heard him mumble in between intakes of breath, mostly, but when I moved my tongue one particular way I heard Frank cry out a "shit!" before I felt his hand on my head, tangling his fingers in my greasy hair. His hand pushed me down lower on him, and I tried my best not to gag again. Squinting my eyes and squeezing the plain of his stomach together in my trail of vision, I remembered another tip from porn--the hand. 

Taking one of my free hands, reaching up, I wrapped my hand around the bottom of his dick, the part that I couldn't take into my mouth. With a few uncoordinated slides of hand and mouth, I soon found that I was able to work into a rhythm. The quicker I moved my hand in sync with my mouth, the louder Frank got above me, and the rougher Frank pulled at my hair, the harder he shoved me down into his crotch. His thighs were spreading farther apart in my peripheral vision, and I could feel him kicking at the bed, tangling the sheets and even kicking one of the blankets down to the ground. I tried to move faster, faster, and even though I could feel myself getting somewhat tired, I didn't care at all.

Frank didn't taste like much, but at the same time he tasted like so many things. If there was a flavor to be assigned to heat, to the slimy feel of his pre-cum on my tongue, then perhaps that was what he could taste like. I tasted sweat, certainly, like if I were to lick one of my clammy palms right now. Frank didn't have that dead-skin slide to him, though. His slide was burning up under my tongue, and it was getting wetter by the second. I knew it was mostly from my spit, but I realized that the hot, slimy taste was growing heavier in my mouth. I licked it up eagerly, sucking it off of the tip and dragging my tongue up underneath him. 

His skin felt like nothing I'd felt before. The skin of his penis, that was. The rest of him was of course smoother, of course freer of imperfections, of course better than any other skin I'd encountered. But it was the skin of his penis that was so strange. I had touched mine before, certainly. I knew what a penis felt like. But Frank's just felt so different to me. Perhaps it was the fact that it was in my mouth. I had never inserted my own penis into my mouth before, never slid my tongue around my balls, shivered around the taint before realizing I had gone too far and moving back up to take Frank's genitals back in my mouth. I made a little moan around him, and Frank moaned back at me. My stomach flopped over, realizing I may have caused that moan.

I wanted to pull off, to mumble his name at him, but my mouth was obviously full. I sped my hand up faster, and tried to move my tongue as quickly as I could against him. Frank grew louder, louder, until he finally clapped his hand over his mouth, groaning into it and shoving his hips up into my face. I pulled back quickly, gagging for air and sputtering to regain my composure. My mouth was smeared with Frank's "come," and it was dripping down my chin. I could taste it, feel it thick all across my face, licking it up around my lips and swallowing it down. I felt it slide down my throat and settle in my stomach, Frank sitting in the pit of my stomach, and licked my lips again, sliding the back of my hand across the face and licking the residue from there, too. I didn't notice Frank was staring at me until I had already licked between every crevice of my fingers.

"You're so fucking weird," he said slowly, one hand resting across his stomach. I saw some come there, too, and almost wanted to lick it up as well. I wanted to wipe it all up with my hand, and touch myself with that hand. I wanted to slide it across me, all over the place where I was hard, and make a mess to accompany Frank's. Maybe even over Frank's body. I didn't say anything, though. I simply sat on the bed, staring at him. He frowned at me.

"S-sorry," I stuttered, snapping to my senses.

"You like sucking dudes off that much?" 

"I, um. Well, y-you're--"

"Your first, right? Figured," he snorted. 

"H-have you e-ever--"

"Duh."

"Y-you have?"

"'Course I have," he smirked. "But I'm not suckin' you off."

My stomach dropped. I hadn't been expecting it, hadn't expected Frank to do to me what I had done to him. But I hoped that maybe, perhaps he would at least touch me. He still hadn't touched the bare skin of my private parts yet. 

"Not yet," Frank finished.

"N-not, not yet?"

Frank just smirked at me. "C'mere, Gerard. Gee-rard," he laughed, tugging me by the collar of my shirt and bringing my face to his. "You get paid this week, don't you?"

"Y-yeah, I--" I tried to say, but I was cut off by Frank's tongue sliding into my mouth, licking his semen out of my mouth. It was the most obscene thing I had ever experienced.

"Take me out. I'll suck you off afterwards," he said, kissing me again after he finished his sentence. "See how much money you make, see how much of my mouth you get. Good?"

"Frank, I--" I tried to duck in again, to kiss him as reply, but he laughed, shoving me off.

"Show me some fucking money. Then you can kiss me."

I sighed. "Do I have to--"

"Yeah. See you tomorrow. Payday," he said, fluffing up his pillows and sliding his half-naked, sticky body beneath his sheets. 

"C-can I give you one more kiss?" I blurted, hands in the kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt. My hard-on was still poking out, but I could easily stifle it for the sake of Frank.He rolled his eyes at me. 

"Yeah, I guess," he huffed, and I pressed my lips one last time. He was soft and warm against me, without any of the hasty, violent motions of before.

"Goodnight, Frank," I said softly, pulling apart from him and blinking at his big, sleepy hazel eyes. Frank truly had to be the most beautiful person I had ever seen. He sighed again.

"Don't forget to shut the window on your way out."


	15. Chapter 15

"So, how much did you get paid this week?" Frank drawled, leaning over onto me once we were inside my car. I had just gotten off of work, and as he did sometimes, Frank loitered around the deli until I had clocked out. He had been greedily tailing me until we got in the vehicle, pawing at me and throwing out questions as soon as we were both buckled indoors, out of the cold.

"T-two hundred," I said, clumsily pushing my wallet into his hands. His face broke out into delight as the he pulled out the twenty-dollar bills and counted them, as well as a few other bills.

"Two hundred and twelve," he said. He sounded very pleased, and he slid my wallet back into my pocket, giving my penis a squeeze and my cheek a wet, sloppy kiss. "I wanna go to Game Stop," he grinned, settling back in his car seat and buckling his belt up, kicking his feet onto the dashboard.

"Game Stop?" I asked, frowning. I hadn't been to a Game Stop since the last World of Warcraft expansion came out, several years ago. Video games got more and more difficult to afford after I stopped being gifted with Christmas presents, and in that time I had really forgotten where the closest Game Stop even was. 

"Yeah. I'll give you directions, it's by the mall. It's like, in the mall, actually."

I cringed a little bit as I started my car up, remembering what had happened the last time I had taken Frank out shopping at the mall. I knew it was probably going to go the same way. I had already planned on having an empty wallet, but I wanted to keep Frank happy. He was obviously happy, and obviously excited. He had brought a CD with him in his backpack, and he crammed it into the disc drive of my car stereo, blasting some very loud music as we drove over the interstates and overpasses. It was slow going, as traffic was especially bad that day. Frank didn't seem interested in making conversation with me, but he was more than content to bash and kick his sneakers against my dashboard. I slumped down in my seat as the drivers adjacent to me in the traffic glared at our car--Frank was certainly being impolite, with how loud he insisted on the music being. The punk-rock bass guitar was making the seat shake as I attempted to crawl inside of it.

When the song shifted, Frank started singing along after the vocals kicked in. I stared at him, dumbfounded. I had heard him speak, certainly, but I hadn't even thought that Frank would ever sing. He was really shouting more than he was carrying on any sort of melody, but he was bounding around past the constraints of the seat belt. He was yelling something with a lot of curse words as he drummed on his thighs, shook his head around, and almost danced to the rhythm of the song. I was too busy staring at him to move when the traffic advanced, and it took me a minute to hear the cars honking their horns behind me--Frank's music was drowning any other noise out. 

I quickly accelerated, once I got the picture, and Frank was knocked back into his seat with the force. He started laughing, wiping his nose across his sleeve and pushing the button on the dashboard to change the song playing from the CD. I would have to attempt to document all of this later. The way his nose was red with the cold, and the thin trails of moist mucus that were coming out of it. He was wearing different clothes than usual, his casual clothes as opposed to the uniform he had been adhering to more and more lately. Instead, he had a pair of very ripped, very tight black jeans (which I think I had purchased for him on the last outing), and a red hooded sweatshirt with some skull on it and a logo for the "Misfits." I figured they were a band, maybe the band that was currently blasting out of my car speakers. Frank's hair was growing out, and it flopped even lower on his face. I wanted to reach out and tuck it behind his ears, but at the same way the dark brown made for a sharp contrast with how light his skin was. A couple tendrils of his hair were dusting over the faint freckles on his cheeks, and I wished we were parked so I could kiss him. I hoped that I was at the point now where I could kiss him at will. I thought that maybe I would when we stopped driving.

We did stop driving shortly after, pulling inside the parking garage of the mall and going up to the fourth-floor lot of it. I hesitated to shut off the ignition, and Frank was already retrieving his CD and unbuckling his seat belt. I stared at him as he adjusted his hoodie, tugged the hem of it down over the sliver of skin that was peeking out where his clothes had ridden up. I realized that before I would have been desperate for any stolen glance of the skin held beneath his clothes. Now, however, I had seen nearly all of Frank. I had never seen him completely undressed at any single time, but I had seen enough bits and pieces to put the entire composition of Frank together in my head. I fumbled with my own seat belt, stealing looks at Frank as he rummaged around in his backpack.

"F-frank?" I asked hesitantly.

"What?"

"I--I, um--oh, Frank, I--"

My inhibitions eliminated themselves as I leaned across my gear shift, smashing my hand into a crumpled fast-food bag as I cupped the back of Frank's head with my other hand. I pressed our mouths together the best I could, and attempted to mash our lips together like Frank had led us to the night before. I felt Frank squirm underneath me, making some kind of muffled noises under my tongue. I felt his hands on my chest and I closed my eyes, wondering if perhaps Frank was daring enough to touch me in the car, but then I felt something sharp and painful in my back, and I was sprawled against the window of my car looking at Frank from a distance. Frank was looking at me in rage, wiping his mouth off with his sleeve. He had scooted far back in his seat, so that his own back was pressed against the window on his respective side of the car.

"What the fuck was that?!" he exclaimed, drawing his knees up to his chest, stomping one sneaker into the upholstered seat of my car. "Seriously, what the fuck, Gerard?"

"I, I thought--"

"You thought it was okay to fucking molest me in a goddamn parking garage?" he demanded.

"But, but Frank, we had--we do those things now! Right? Don't we, don't--like in your room? We kiss and touch? Right? W-we're, we're--"

"We're not fucking anything! You're just some--some fucking weirdo!" Frank huffed, looking at the door as if he was going to open it, but then settling back in his seat again. "Jesus fucking Christ," he grumbled.

"We're--nothing? B-but--"

"Gerard, you--fuck. You're just...we're friends, okay? We're buddies. So keep your fucking....jerk off fantasies on the other side of the car."

"B-but they're not j-j-just...Frank, we we do do that. W-we do, j-j-erk each other, we do that. We do the off thing."

Frank sighed again, tipping his head back against the car seat and dragging a hand down his face. "Gerard--"

"A-are we not going to do those things anymore?" I asked, rubbing my hands together. I could deal with that. I could deal with not touching Frank, with only seeing him, only knowing him from a distance. But I didn't want to go back to that. I didn't want to have Frank snatched away from me when I was just starting to get used to having him so close to me.

"We can still...look. Just...not in the car. Okay? Not in public. Like don't, don't touch me in public," Frank said, frowning and looking out the window. 

"H-how come?" I asked, worried about setting Frank off again. He didn't respond at first, didn't even look at me.

"Because...because we're both dudes," Frank said flatly, still looking away from me. "People don't like that shit."

"O-oh."

I figured it was as good a reason as any, and one I hadn't really considered before. I knew that homosexuality was bad, but I didn't consider myself a homosexual. That implied that I would be attracted to more men than merely Frank. And sure, I had been attracted to other men before. But I had also been attracted to girls. A few times in high school I had gotten called a "faggot," but that was more for my long hair than anything else. My father tended to call me the same thing, and then criticize my hair. That was how I knew that the two things were connected. My hair was grown out to past my chin now, and Frank's hair had grown out a lot since I first met him. I wondered if someone who saw us together would call both of us faggots. It could certainly be worse, I thought. Being called a faggot wasn't the worst thing in the world, and it seemed like it would be an easy trade to make for the sake of being able to hold Frank's hand out in public, to never break contact with him. To act like all of the other couples that I always saw on TV, or at the mall.

But we weren't a couple, I remembered as Frank and I got out of the car. Frank had established that. We were "friends," and I knew there was a difference between the two. As I hung behind Frank, being careful not to trail him too close, I thought about what the difference must be. As far as I had known before, the difference between friends and lovers was sexual touching. But Frank and I had sexual touching. As his hips swung around in his tight jeans before me, I remembered that I had seen Frank's buttocks, his hips, his thin pale legs spread out naked in the light of his bedroom. There had been sexual contact between us. We had touched each other's private parts. I didn't understand what it was supposed to mean. What he and I were supposed to mean, what there was between us at all. Frank called us friends. And even though I hadn't had friends in high school, barely any friends as a child, I knew that friends didn't do what Frank and I did.

Frank was slower than he had been during our first outing to the mall, and I aimlessly wandered around the game store while Frank took his time picking out games from the "used" bin. I saw him staring at price tags, turning his eyes to the ceiling and frowning as he attempted to calculate the price. I had noticed a somewhat dusty Playstation 2 sitting in the corner of Frank's room, by his television, as well as what I thought was an Xbox. I wasn't that familiar with video games, as Mikey didn't play them and I was long since disconnected from them. They did look interesting, but not nearly as interesting as Frank. An image flashed into my mind at that moment, of me curled up in a warm spot of Frank's bed, filling up a dent in the mattress Frank may have evacuated to play video games on the floor. I would sit there with my sketchbook, and I could see Frank's face, his body, lit up by the television screen as he tapped away and I scribbled page upon page of his face, his figure. 

I wondered if Frank and I were perhaps at a point where he would invite me over without needing anything from me, without wanting anything aside from my company. Maybe just give me the opportunity to sit in his space, to breathe in the air that was full of his scent and his scent alone--that "clean-laundry" smell I could never get to stick to my own clothes. They were too foul to really be salvaged, and the mildew of my own basement didn't help their case. There was no such mildew in Frank's basement, and while I liked to be by myself in my own room--always had preferred it, to anything else--the dim light and the dust in there was stifling, crippling, in every new moment that I found myself without Frank. 

Frank.

Frank, so much, all the time.

"Gerard."

Frank.

"Gerard. Hey. Pay attention," Frank said, frowning as he stood in front of me, waving a hand before my face. "I'm done," he said, with a tall stack of video games in his hands.

"O-oh, oh. Sorry," I said hastily, digging my wallet out of my back pocket and following Frank to the register. He dumped the cases unceremoniously on the counter, and I quietly handed over a little over one hundred dollars to the employee. It was less than Frank's shopping trip had been last time, and I looked at him in hope of gaining some sort of guidance. Frank didn't look at me, though, and we walked out of the store in silence, plastic bag swinging in his hand.

"I'm hungry," he said, still keeping his eyes down on the floor of the mall.

"Do you want something from the food court?"

"No."

"Oh. Um."

Frank was still silent, and I didn't try to speak again. He just kept walking, and I followed him on his path through clusters of other teenagers, through women and babies, through elderly couples and all of the other types of people that crowded the shopping center. Frank didn't stop at any of the other stores that had caught his attention previously, and all of the excitement that he had been exhibiting in the car before we actually arrived at the mall. I worried that it was my fault, that he was behaving this way because of the conversation in the car. Because I had tried to kiss him. Because I had tried to touch him while we were in the car. 

I saw where Frank was taking us now, back out to the parking garage. I started fumbling in my pockets for my keys, digging around for them while squinting at the back of Frank's head, attempting to read him. I still couldn't infer a thing, not even when we got in the car and both of us had settled into our seats, sitting awkwardly in silence. 

"So um, are you--are you wanting to get something to eat on the way home?"

"Nah."

"Y-you don't? Oh, you, you said you were hungry in there, um, I t-thought--"

Frank looked up at me then, looking up again at me with his usual expression returned to his face. His characteristic smirk. "Not hungry for food."

"Then wh-"

I was cut off as soon as I attempted to speak, cut off by Frank's tongue in my mouth, hands pawing at my thighs and my chest as he bit on my bottom lip, tugging it towards him and releasing it. I tasted blood. "Hungry for your cock," he said, grinning and going to my mouth with his again.

I was hard almost instantly, and Frank was grabbing at it with just as much haste. "Have you ever fucked in public before?" he asked me, breathlessly as he grabbed at the button of my jeans, tumbling down to his knees on the floor of my car as his torso stretched over the middle of the car, yanking my zipper down before pulling my thing out of my dampening boxer shorts. He batted his eyes up at me, licking his lips before he leaned over farther, straining his muscles to reach me as he shoved my knees apart, yanking my pants down farther at the same time that he sucked the tip of my penis into his mouth.

I gasped and bucked my hips up, knees flying up and smacking into the dashboard. I gritted my teeth with the pain of impact, and Frank pulled back to scold me, to criticize me for moving. He didn't speak long though, just went back to my cock, licking up the side of it and skimming it with his teeth. I was lost inside of his mouth as soon as he enveloped me in his lips again. I couldn't even place the sensation. I felt one of Frank's small, smooth hands wrap around the base of it, squeezing it firmly before reaching down to my balls and flicking his fingers over those, too. He was fast, nimble, and I realized at some point that his hand had been taken away from the bottom of my cock, and that the tip of it was prodding at something. The back of Frank's throat, I realized, and my stomach seized up at that point.

Remembering the breathing exercises I had practiced, the ways I had trained myself to hold off, I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands and gaped down at Frank as he propped himself up on his hands better, blinking up at me silently as he moved his mouth up and down over my cock. His cheeks were sucked in, and the corners of his mouth were smeared messy, sloppy, slimy with drool and with--with my semen, I realized. His mouth was shiny in the dim fluorescent lighting of the parking garage. We were the only ones parked on this level, I realized, and with that fact I realized it could be a little more acceptable for me to open my mouth, to start making noises. Embarrassing, snuffling, whining, moaning noises. Not like the fragments of symphonies, the little notes of music that fell out of Frank whenever he became aroused.

Hesitantly, I reached out to place a hand on top of Frank's head, curling my fingers in his soft hair. It was so long now, and the tendrils tangled around my fingers. Frank made a noise that sounded like approval around me, pulling back and flicking his tongue around the top of it before he engulfed it fully again, sucking hard and drawing in his cheeks. The skin hollowed out and I could see the outline of his perfectly shaped cheekbones. I heard myself from far away, yelping Frank's name, and then he was swallowing me again and I was spilling down his throat, crying out and rolling my hips up towards the roof of my car. I felt Frank's fingers digging into my hips, felt my eyes squeezed shut inside my face, and then the sensation was over.

I opened my eyes again to see Frank sitting back in his car seat again, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and then smearing the mess on the upholstery of my car seat. I was breathless, still hanging out of my pants, bare assed on the driver's seat as I gawked at Frank. His forehead was sweaty, his cheeks were still flushed red, and his lips, god his lips. They were wet, glistening, and his tongue was still darting out to lick at them periodically. I was soft now, and only somewhat slick. I realized that Frank had swallowed all of my cum. Everything that I had ejaculated out, everything that would normally be directed into a pillow, had gone straight down Frank's throat. I shuddered, tipping my head back against the headrest and closing my eyes, trying to catch my breath.

There wasn't much time for that, though. Frank was already pawing at me, demanding that I take him home, and I had little choice other than to yank up my jeans again, fumble for my keys and start the ignition. Before I shifted the gears, before the car began to roll, I leaned over to try and kiss Frank again. But he turned his head away, just as he had before.

"Frank? Frank, what--"

He sighed at me. "I told you, don't fucking kiss me."

"But--"

"Home. Now."

And I drove him home, and he didn't give me a glance, not a word, nothing except the slam of the car door as I dropped him off in front of his house. As always.


	16. Chapter 16

Frank had me over a few evenings later, although he did not touch me. Nor did he take much time to look at me, as his focus was consumed by the blaring television set in his basement. Blaring bright, that is. The volume was turned down, so as to keep his parents from knowing how late he was up. As well as to keep them knowing from me, I supposed. Their car was parked in the driveway, and I had taken care to park around the corner from Frank's house and take the extra effort to walk down to his house. He didn't seem particularly eager to see me, and had only directed me to sit on the spindly folding chair while he sprawled across the expanse of his bed, hammering away at a game console controller as images of blood and gore flashed across the screen. I watched, quietly.

I could only assume that he wanted my company. Something was going wrong with Frank, at least in the past few days. He seemed edgy, and had been sitting far in the back of the deli, as tucked away as he could manage. He was wearing different clothes, not his tight clothes, not his uniform clothes, but rather, baggy jeans and sweatshirts that consumed his small frame and served to make him as invisible as me. Really, he sometimes because impossible to see in those dark corners. I would know, as I was watching him. Always watching him, from the time that he came in after school to the time that my shift ended and I drove him home. He was no longer asking for these rides. Rather, he was expecting them.

I was happy to provide them, though, and not simply for the sake of wanting to be with Frank. It was largely due to the fact that I wasn't the only one watching Frank. My manager had informed me that the man from before had come in again on one of my days off, demanding where I was. When he caused what was apparently a large scene, to include smashing some of the glass bottled drinks in the cooler, the police were called and he was booked with a restraining order. My manager gave me specific instructions to keep him locked out, showing me the emergency call button under the register as well as interrogating me about if I knew this man or not, if I had any background with him. I didn't have a thing. I honestly didn't. And I didn't know what "thing" this man could have with me.

While there may be no relationship between this man and me, I was starting to wonder about who the man was truly connected to. Wonder was a loose word for it. I was almost sure that the man had something to do with Frank. There had been the outburst in the store before, and there was clearly established ground between them. There had to be. And there was the way the man was still walking past the shop every day, punctually, for half hours back and forth as he paced in front of it on the street. He peered in the windows every chance he found, and he always set his eyes in the direction of the table Frank took. Or, well, the table that Frank used to take.

I frowned at the back of Frank's head as he continued to mash the buttons on his game controller, oblivious to my staring. It would be a good time for me to draw him, and I had tried. For once, though, I couldn't pay attention. I was too caught up in worry to draw Frank. My head was far too foggy. Whoever that man was, he had some foul intentions with Frank. The man was violent, too. I knew that. It was obvious, really. Strikingly obvious. Despite me not being in attendance of the outburst my manager had described, I could picture it in my head. The wild eyes set in that man's pale face, the stringy hair. The day he had confronted me at the register, he had reeked of alcohol, too. It poured rank out of his skin. That man was dangerous. But who was he?

"What?" Frank asked, swiveling his head around for a second to look at me. He had paused the game, I noticed, and was frowning at me now. "What are you talking about?"

"W-what?" I hadn't said anything, not to my knowledge.

"Who's who? You just asked "who is he."" Frank said, frowning at me harder.

"O-oh."

It seemed as though my thoughts had betrayed me, fallen out of my mouth and into the airspace of Frank's room. Thinking out loud wasn't the healthiest thing in the world. But I realized that now was my chance. I had already said my first question, and it should make sense to follow up with the rest of my questions. Those questions asking who the man was, where he came from, his problem, and his problem with Frank, most of all. The question of how he knew Frank in the first place, what he could possibly want from Frank. Why that man was so crazy, so violent, so horrible in the first place. I should ask. Frank had to know. He couldn't be oblivious to the man's presence, not with the way he was hunching his shoulders, seizing up until he was safely in the confines of my car. He never relaxed anymore until I locked the doors.

"The man. The one who, who always...who's always walking around. O-outside. Outside the store. Where I work, that one, um, who, who is, who's that..."

Frank cocked an eyebrow at me.

"The one who yelled at you that one time. The crazy guy," I blurted.

Frank's face fell, going pale and blank. Not completely blank, though. There was a sharpness in his eyes, and a sneer rising that I had never quite seen before. "Mr. Warner?"

"His name's Mr.Warner?"

"Yeah, that's his name," Frank said abruptly, turning back around to his game. He un-paused it and began pounding away again.

"N-no, I--not just his name! Like who, who--who is he?" I tried to say. The words I was pushing out didn't hold well enough to explain what I wanted. The information I needed.

"He's just some dude."

"No, Frank, Frank, really--"

Frank huffed, pausing again and snapping, "He's my old teacher, okay? He used to be my teacher. That's what he does, okay, can you shut up now?"

"Y-your teacher?" I asked, confused. "But why, why would a teacher follow--"

"Because I fucked him, dumbass," Frank said, putting emphasis on the word "fucked." "Are you happy? Does that answer your fucking question? He's stalking me because he wants my ass back, kind of like how you tail me for it all the goddamn time," he said quickly before tucking his knees up to his chest and starting in on his video game again.

I sat in the chair, mouth still dropped open. Frank had fucked a teacher? Frank had been involved with that man, that man that stalked the sidewalk endlessly, the man who was capable of such awful violence. That man had been a teacher? A public school teacher? But he didn't teach anymore?

"No, he doesn't teach anymore. Heard he lost it a couple weeks ago. Like, he lost more than that, but whatever. Anyway, he's pissed at me for it," Frank sighed. "He won't leave me alone now," he said, slashing a monster inside of his video game screen. Frank's character hopped around in some sort of victory dance, and I blinked at Frank in the dim blue light, seeing it flash on his face as the game screen flickered.

"Why? Why do you...did the school...find out he, he...did things..."

"Neither of us are that fucking stupid. I dumped his lame old ass and he stopped showing up to school. The dickhead just started drinking all the time cause he got sad, I guess."

"Sad that you--"

"That I dumped him, yes Gerard, holy shit. I get that your social interactions are pretty fuckin' limited, but don't you watch fucking TV? When people break up, the person who got dumped typically gets upset. Did you know that, Gerard? Sad? Know what feel? Sad make cry?" Frank sneered at me, speaking slowly and childishly. "Doesn't take a fucking genius."

"But why?"

"Why what? I just fucking--"

"No, not--not why he's following, why, why--why'd you leave him?"

Frank squinted at me, glaring with a kind of darkness in his eyes that I hadn't seen before. It spoke of something I couldn't understand, something deeply wrong that only Frank knew of. "Because he was a fucking creep. Good enough answer? Again. Fucking figure it out yourself."

"I'm figuring," I said softly, looking down at my hands for a moment.

Frank had been having sex with someone else. Someone dangerous. A teacher. Someone older than him, someone in a role to watch him, someone who must have seen him every single day, someone who had power over him. I wondered why Frank had wanted to. The man didn't seem to have many positive characteristics, not from what I had seen. He was always furious, always unkempt with a beard creeping in, with sweat on his brow and wild hair, with horrible words coming out of his mouth, his uncoordinated drunken tongue. I didn't understand why Frank had decided to have relations with that man, of all people. Especially not a teacher. I had heard rumors, once upon a time while in high school, of a gym teacher with a female student. But never of a man with another boy. What could Frank have seen in him?

"Why?" I said aloud, noncommittally. 

"Why what?" Frank snapped, not looking away from his game.

"Why did you sleep with him?"

"Because I was bored," Frank said, again drawing emphasis on the last word. "Same reason I'm sleeping with your sorry ass."

That stung, admittedly. But it wasn't satisfying.

"But why a teacher? Why not, why not...someone else?" I said, as much as I loathed the words that came out of my mouth. I didn't want to encourage Frank after other people. Selfish as it was, I didn't want to encourage Frank after anyone but myself. There may have been this one other person, but it was in the past. And understandably, it would've been impossible for this man, crazy as he may be, to resist Frank. Frank was completely impossible to ignore. It was one other person. I could cope with that. I could ignore the fact that Frank had been stained, spoiled, penetrating by someone else. I could suppress the bile rising in my throat, suppress the way my hands were shaking in my lap.

Frank snorted.

"There were a lot of someone elses," he laughed. "Mr.Warner was like, fuckin'...I don't even know. But there was a long fucking line before him," he said, grinning at his screen.

"W-what do you mean?"

"I fucked a lot of people, dude. It's fun."

"It's fun?"

"Yeah. What's wrong, no one's ever touched you before me? Aw, boo. I keep forgetting."

"But how many?"

"I dunno. Who gives a shit?"

"But...but why?" I groped for the words in my throat, trying to grope for reasons in my mind. I couldn't understand why Frank would throw himself out into the world like that, to open himself for everyone. For so many people. He said he had fucked a lot of people. He had had sex with not just one person, but many other people. And why? I couldn't possibly understand why. I didn't want to understand why. But I had to know.

"Why? Well, for one it's nice. For two, people like boys like me. You obviously do. Don't even try and fucking hide it. I'm a fucking type. A type that most people are into."

"A type? No, Frank, not--"

"Not what? You're telling me you've been buying me stuff so you can make me happy? Bullshit. You're bribing me to get into my pants."

"But--" I heard my voice crack as I tried to find a way to explain myself. I was trying to make him happy. I honestly, truly was trying to keep him happy. I wanted to be the one making him happy, true, I wanted that significance to him. And I wanted Frank. But I wasn't like all the others. I wasn't like Mr.Warner. I wasn't a violent person, I wasn't old, and I wasn't using Frank for sex alone. I didn't need sex. I hadn't needed it before Frank. It was a consequence of Frank's existence, not a necessity. It would have been fine enough if Frank had only stood, motionless, without his scattering hands and his flitting tongue. I would have been happy with Frank as a marble statue, if only to admire him. That was all I ever wanted to do. To capture him in pages, and maybe be given the privilege to trap his fingers in tangles with my own. I wasn't bribing Frank. I thought I had been doing a good thing by providing for Frank. I thought it had been making him happy.

Frank must've sensed my distress, as he paused his game again to turn to me, crossing his legs "indian-style" and setting his face in his hands. He ran one hand through his unkempt hair, looking frustrated with me. "God, don't start fucking crying. I get it, you're different. You're better than them, you actually care about me. Whatever, okay. That's fine. But dude, it's nothing new. Everyone bought me stuff. You're just buying me more. Like, dude. Where do you think I got my PS2?" he asked, gesturing to the buzzing console. "Mom and Dad sure as hell didn't get it for me."

"Wh-who did?"

"Mr.Benson. Dad's coworker. He was one of my first, when we went on vacation or whatever. I was like twelve. He took our family to the beach with his family and then he like, touched my nuts and felt bad, so he bought me that. Then when he did it again when he took us skiing, he like, bought me an Xbox. And a new TV. Except that time he yknow, got in my ass. But whatever."

"H-how did your--your parents--"

"Mom and Dad are never fucking home. I told them my friends didn't want their shit anymore. That they gave it to me."

"And they believed you?" I asked, unable to believe it. Frank smiled.

"Course they did."

"B-but--"

"And then there was Brian, who gave me weed all the time until people started calling him queer. And Mr.Clements, who was Dad's intern until he quit. He always came over for dinner and then like, turned around and drove back two hours later so he could fuck me after Mom and Dad went to sleep. He gave me money. He was your typical yuppie asshole, yknow? I guess he felt guilty or something. I don't know. Oh, and then like, Damien was the best. He like, lived across from a liquor store? So I'd blow him and stuff and then he'd go get us booze, and then he'd let me have as much as I wanted and then fuck me. Pretty good trade off," he said, grinning wider. "Oh, and Jason--"

"Stop! S-stop!" I exclaimed. "Don't!"

"Don't what? Don't tell you? You asked," Frank said flatly, blinking at me. "I sleep with people cause it fucking gets me things. Mom and Dad aren't gonna give me what I want," he says, snorting. "You think my fucking parents will give me a bong?"

"Why do you even need that stuff?" I pressed, desperately seeking for answers. "A lot of other people don't do stuff like that."

"Like what, sleep around? I don't fucking need you telling me what to do. You know who started to do that? Mr.Warner. I'll kick you the hell out right now if you start that shit." Frank's voice was rising, getting edgier and more dangerous. He was firm. He had all the control, all the influence and power in this situation.

"I w-wasn't trying--"

"I keep you around because I like you. Don't fuck that up."

"I don't want to," I said quietly. "I'm sorry," I sniffled.

"Anyway," Frank said, sighing. "Mr.Warner won't leave me alone now, I guess."

"I'm sorry."

"Is that all you can say now?"

"N-no. B-but I'll, I'll give you a ride whenever you want. I-if that's, if that's what you need. Because of him."

"I'd appreciate it," Frank said quietly. 

Neither of us said anything after that. "I-I should go," I muttered, after Frank started to shift around, visibly uncomfortable. "I-I'll just--I'll see you tomorrow."

"Gerard, wait," Frank said suddenly, jerking his head up to look at me.

"W-what?" I said, freezing. 

"Don't talk to him if he talks to you, okay? Don't. He's nuts."

"I won't."

"Good," Frank said, giving me a grimace before returning to his game, settling himself back on his pillows. "See you tomorrow, Gerard."

I scrambled out of his window as quickly as I could, and it was for good reason, too. As soon as I was out I quietly vomited out my dinner into the bushes adjacent to his house. My eyes burned and my nose stung as I retched, but I didn't allow myself to lay there after I finished, recovering as I normally would after becoming ill. Instead I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the damp, hot patch of vomit that was seeping through my jeans and onto my knee as I ran to my car. I started driving blindly, blowing through the interstate and the streets to my home, crawling into my bed and burying myself underneath the covers, wrapping myself into a tight ball where thoughts wouldn't follow me. But they did.

All I could see was Frank bent over, Frank opened up by mysterious older men. Classmates. The punk friends he used to hang out with, their studded belts slamming against his thighs, or another pair of uniform khakis puddled next to his own inside a bathroom stall. Tucked away. I didn't know anything. I couldn't begin to understand why Frank had done this. I had dates, I knew it was since he was twelve. Twelve year old Frank. So much smaller, so much more delicate than he already was now. Being broken and abused by some man. Some man inside of him. Frank had said that, he had told me that detail. There had been too many for Frank to even remember. Frank couldn't remember how many people he had handled him, this pure boy, this untouched collection of skin and bone that was now proving to have been passed all around town.

And now it had been passed into my hands. I was just as bad. I was doing the same, as Frank had told me. I was just as bad in every way, I had no room to speak. My hands had joined all the pre-existing fingerprints in sullying Frank, in building him up. No, not building him. In tearing him apart. In ruining his purity, in destroying the figure. I had taken the still life and smashed it apart with my own hands, smashed on ripened fruit that was already blackened with bruises, creeping up with rot.

But Frank wasn't rotten. He couldn't be rotten, no, not Frank. He was still perfect. He had been manipulated, he had to be. Or it was the fault of his parents. That was where the blame rested. If they had paid attention to him, supervised him on those vacations, doted on him, provided him with his stupid electronics, he wouldn't have needed to seek out such things elsewhere. He wouldn't have needed to meet so many men. It could have worked that he only met me. I could have been the only one to look after him. To provide for him.

I could still do that now, I thought, attempting to console myself. I would give Frank whatever he wanted, still. But I wouldn't be like the others. I would demand nothing from him. No kissing, no touching, and certainly no sex. I would not defile Frank any further. I wouldn't. It wasn't in me. That wasn't my interest in Frank. I didn't see him as something to use, something to defile. Frank was something to exist. Something to devote time, devote attention, devote existence to. He wasn't constructed for the purpose of being fucked. Dirty words like that had no place with Frank. And I would not be one to engage in such acts with him. Frank would be independent. I would restore his purity. I would do it singlehandedly. 

I didn't sleep well that night.

I couldn't stop waking up in sick, sweaty dreams where Frank was on his back, sprawled out before me. Where I was heaving above him, deep inside him, thrusting farther.

Dreams where I was Mr.Warner.


	17. VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE, PLEASE READ

AUTHOR'S NOTE: 

So! The previous chapter was definitely pretty huge, namely in terms of exposition of Frank's (pretty fucking dark) past. But there's definitely a little bit more to this story, aside even from what is written here.

If you follow my girlfriend (waycest on there, mode on here) and I on Tumblr, you would know that I started writing this fic in spring of last year, around the same time that she wrote a fic of her own--Jezebel Boy. Here's a link to it: http://archiveofourown.org/works/396595/chapters/652090

Now, seeing as we're in a pretty serious relationship, we spent a lot of time discussing our characters for both of these stories. In this process, it came to be that we realized our stories did not exist separately, but rather, overlapped. The "Frank" in both stories is the same character, and the "Mr.Warner" in DMIWM is a name change of "Mr.Way" in her story. While there are some unavoidable discrepancies between the story, the two plots run in tandem to each other, for the most part.

In the fall, Frank began attending school and his process of seducing "Mr.W." This was also the time when my Gerard began to watch Frank. Now, reading JB, one notices that Frank had a large affair with Mr.W over Christmas/in December. This is when Frank stopped going to the deli, explaining the absence that had such a dramatic effect on Gerard. JB ends with Mr.W alone (this fic was never finished) in his apartment, wondering when Frank will visit him again. Since in the chapter previous to that, in their last sexual encounter, Mr.W choked Frank during sex, and then essentially began to stalk him. Frank cut ties with Mr.W at this point, as Mr.W became really fucking creepy. When Frank cut it off with him, Mr.W began drinking heavily, stopped showing up to school, and was subsequently fired. Blaming this on Frank, he began to stalk him outside of school, explaining the deranged man that presents himself in the story as an antagonist currently. 

Now that Frank has given Gerard his explanation of things, I figured it would be a good time to explain the connection between the two fics. While this shouldn't be a (huge) surprise for those of you who already know Sarah and I through Tumblr, I hope that it's still a good enough explanation/plot twist and that it brings a lot of things together for you as the readers.

Also, for everyone who was a fan of JB and complained that it never "finished," you guys are finally getting your ending. :)

As a final comment, I sincerely want to thank everyone who is keeping up with this fic and giving me feedback. This is the biggest thing that I've ever had the privilege and the challenge of writing, and the support that everyone has given me in this long process (creeping towards a year!) has given me so much motivation to keep going in writing this story. I hope that everyone who is following continues to enjoy it, and that you all stick around--there is a lot coming up in the next few chapters (and, soon to be, conclusion!) of this story.

Again, thank you so much. I can't explain how much it means to me that people are reading my writing, much less getting so involved with it in terms of comments and speculation, and much less actually enjoying it.

Readers are truly the best people in the world, and I have so much thanks to give to all of you as the writer.

So on that note, do stick around! A lot is going to happen from here to the end!!

\--xoxo, sparky


	18. Chapter 18

"God, what's your fucking problem?" Frank spat at me as we idled in my car, a few blocks down from his house. "You're being even more of a silent loser than usual. What's wrong, something fucking happen?"

"No," I sighed for the tenth time that day. Frank had been pestering me since I picked him up, as he did every day now. 

He had started in since the day after that night at his house, that night of all the awful truths and revelations.It was because that next night, I couldn't manage to touch Frank anymore. I could barely look at him. I could watch him, certainly, from the other side of his room. Frank had demanded I come over again, as usual, and had tried to slide his tongue in my mouth as soon as I entered his bedroom. He was already shirtless when I'd arrived, but I had only touched his chest to gently push him off me. I couldn't touch him. I couldn't.

I had a sore throat anyway, once I had arrived at Frank's house that night. Last night, in between nightmares, I had been periodically vomiting as well. I figured it to be a reasonable enough reaction to what I had learned the night before. I also thought my reaction to recoil from Frank was reasonable. He didn't, though. He had berated me for it the first time, yet kept demanding I come to his house. Every night, I kept my distance from him. Every night, he begged for more attention. He would crawl on my lap, tug at my shirt, nip at nibble at the skin of my neck. But I still just directed him away from me as best as I could.

"Is it because you think I'm some dirty whore now?" he had asked after the third night. There had been a week since he had told me all of those things about himself. "You think you're gonna get some disease?"

It wasn't because I was fearing disease. It was because I didn't want to spoil Frank any further. It was bad enough that I had already smeared my hands on him as I had so far, and touched him like I had--like all those other people had. But I wasn't upset for the fact that so many other people had already touched him. Well, I suppose that wasn't true. I was upset that so many other people had touched Frank, kissed Frank, run their dirty hands all over Frank's pure, clean body. I didn't think Frank was a dirty whore. It was everyone else who was dirty, leaving specks of dirt across his skin, leaving their spit and slime all over his body. 

I didn't believe that I could do anything to fix what had happened before. I didn't believe that I could remedy my own actions. I had been wrong, too, just unable to see it. I should have kept Frank a still life. I should have kept him at the proper distance, given him the proper respect that a model deserved. So much for respecting a form cast in marble. There were more important things to consider when dealing with a form cast in flesh, and I had failed to consider any of them. So I was falling in faulty line with all the others. Frank couldn't even remember how many "others" there had been, and I didn't want an exact number. I didn't want him to mention a "five," mention a "fourteen," no concrete number that could plague me at the register, flash before me in receipts and change. I didn't want to know. Knowing exact details would make everything worse.

The few details I did have were bad enough in themselves. Two of the people Frank had been ruined by I could identify by face. There was Brian, who was one of the punk kids Frank had used to run around with. The details of all of their ugly faces wavered around in my head, and I had to try and remember which one was which. I couldn't place him exactly, and the boy became a conglomerate monster of a collective group's traits. His face changed every time I closed my eyes, as did his body. I could never stop picturing how that body squirmed over Frank, and how Frank moved and writhed beneath that other body. When I was stuck inside of these images, I wanted to pretend that I only conjured Frank's movements based on the pornography I had witnessed. I wanted to pretend that all Frank did in my head was fictionalized, although I knew that it wasn't. I knew exactly how Frank moved because I had seen it myself. 

I wasn't the only person who had seen it. No, not by a long shot. Yet there was only one other person besides myself who I could picture in concrete over Frank, with a face and body that I could see clearly. Mr.Warner. The teacher Frank had engaged with, the drunk ex-teacher who continued to stalk my workplace. He had screamed and raged at one of my female co-workers while she was quitting her shift one evening, saying that she never should have left him. He was drunk. The girl had requested an escort between the building and her car after that. Jersey was full of lunatics, certainly, but Mr.Warner was beginning to cross a line. Of course my manager was clueless to the cause, but I knew. I knew Warner was there for Frank, and for me. I had stolen Frank from him--at least, Frank told me that was what Warner believed. Of course, Frank had also said Warner saw every other person Frank spoke to as a threat. So I really wasn't that special.

Frank had told me that I wasn't that special.

Which was why I was making the efforts to become special. I wanted to set myself aside from all those other people that Frank had entangled myself with, and I would do that by disentangling myself from Frank. I would remain a part of Frank's life, I had to. I needed Frank at this point. But I would not allow myself to touch him. I would be special in being abstinent, in observing only from a distance. As I had before. I hadn't been able to draw lately, a condition of my shameful sexual designs on Frank, a condition of distraction. I would start again. I had to start again. But right now, I could only continue on what I had already begun--the practice of keeping my distance from Frank. I was keeping the folding chair in his room warm every night, and Frank was warming his bed alone. Things were as they should be now. That was how things had to be now.

"Gerard? Hello?" Frank snapped again, waving a hand in my face.

"Oh--oh, Frank. I-I'm sorry, I--"

"Don't bother," he spat, rolling his eyes at me. "And y'know what? Don't bother coming over tonight," he said before grabbling at the handle to get himself out of my car. 

"Frank, wa--"

The door slammed in my face before I could finish my sentence, and I was left to shudder and slump against my steering wheel. I hadn't meant to space out. In fact, I had meant to tell Frank that I had gotten paid again today. I had a larger check, too. A couple people had quit recently, so my hours had increased significantly. I had wanted to tell Frank that if he wanted to go out and get something, we could do that today. But that opportunity was lost. And I had no opportunity for anything else tonight, either. I sighed, starting on the drive home. Maybe there was something Frank wanted. No, buying him something would be a bad idea. He had told me about how he slept with people in order to get things from them, slept with them for personal gain. They would buy him whatever he wanted, they told me, as long as he slept with them.

But then, what if I gave him things to expect nothing in return?

I could give him something. I could be different, I could gift him my significance. I could hand him an object and expect nothing in return. No sex, no kiss, not a touch of his hand anywhere on my body. And that would prove it. That would prove that I wasn't like all the others. That I was different. That I was special. And then, that would mean that Frank would choose me. He would select me over the others, permanently, because he would know that I would care for him and expect nothing in return--nothing except to see him. For that was all I had ever wanted, really. At the heart of things, at the heart of myself, I knew that to look on him was the only thing that I would ever truly want. 

I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know what Frank wanted. I pulled into the local Wal-Mart parking lot, and while I didn't waste any time sitting in my car, I wasted a lot of time wandering in irrelevant aisles. Frank wouldn't want action figures, he wouldn't want tires, he wouldn't want cleaning supplies. I should have gone to the mall, as it was Frank's favorite place to go, to spend my money. Or his money, perhaps. Perhaps the nature of relationship dictated that all was mine was also Frank's. While he may not officially recognize it, I felt committed enough to him to give him everything that I had. But what could I give him aside from my money? What would Frank want, what could I give him in concrete?

My question was answered when I stumbled into the electronics department. His words flew through my head, his words complaining about his parents buying him nothing, and how outdated his current game systems were. Before me, I saw a huge display for the Playstation 3. Frank only had the Playstation 2, and I knew his disappointment from the way he spoke of the few games he was able to pick up from the used section of GameStop, always looking wistfully at the newer cases holding more recent games.

A heavy swipe of my debit card later, I was carrying a heavier box out to my car, triumphantly slamming the lid of my trunk shut once I had loaded up the game system. I had taken whatever new game the cashier had recommended to me, ignoring the three-digit number screaming at me from the receipt. It was for Frank. It was worth it. And he was under no obligation to make up for it, to pay me for it, to do a thing. If he was prostituting his time, I could deal with not seeing him. As long as I could still do something to make him happy. Independently, purely, non-negotiably happy. It wasn't such a high demand.

I knew that Frank had told me not to show up tonight. Certainly, I expected him to be angry, or even non-responsive to my arrival at his window, as usual, that night. But he let me in the window, with the box sliding in with difficulty behind me. Frank's eyebrows shot up as he saw it, eyes darting between my face and the box I was now offering towards him.

"Gerard. Dude, no way is that what--no way. Dude, no fucking way," Frank gaped.

I nodded. "Y-yeah. You, you always, c-c-complain and stuff, so...so um, here you go."

Frank chewed on his lip. "Thanks," he said, looking at the box thoughtfully.

"Y-you're welcome."

He continued to chew, not accepting the box yet, not picking it up to accept it yet. He just gazed, before he eventually sighed, and tugged the waistband of his pajama pants away from his hips, looking inside them. "I didn't like, prepare or anything, but...I guess as long as you got condoms it's okay. Unless you mind."

"W-what?"

"I didn't shave my pubes or whatever. Normally I do, because people like that better. But I mean, we can still fuck. I figured that's what you would want eventually," he sighed. "Thanks for the PS3. It's really nice of you."

"Frank, I--"

"That's why you were quiet, wasn't it? The past few days, right? Cause you know now. Guess you're not as dumb as you look. Kinda just like everyone else, huh?" Frank gave me a weak smile before turning around, hopping on the bed and sprawling on it, legs opened wide. "C'mere then. Here you go."

"Frank! Frank, no, that's not what I wanted!" I exclaimed, setting the box down before waving my hands helplessly in front of my face. "I don't want to--I'm not like the others! I'm not, I, I don't have condoms, o-or--"

"So you're different because you want to go in bareback? Dude, I'm not--"

"No! No, I don't want to, to--to have sex with you! I don't want that!"

"Bullshit. Look, you can stop acting noble when--"

"I'm not acting, Frank! I seriously--I, no! That's...that's not what I want from you." I finished, weakly. "The PS3, it's just...it's just, you can have it. I-it's not...an exchange. I-it's a gift. F-for--"

"For what, blowing you? You already--"

"For being you."

Frank pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at me from the bed. I was still standing by his desk, not having budged an inch to follow him. "For being me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means, it-it-it means, t-that...I, Frank, no! Just take it, okay? I'm sorry, just, please. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I--I'll just--I have to go, I'm sorry. I-I shouldn't h-have come over after you t-told me n-not to, I'll--I'll see you tomorrow," I stuttered at him before I knocked the chair against the wall again, climbing up onto it and running out of his window.

I thought I heard Frank call something out behind me, but I was running to my car. At least for a block, before a stitch reared in my side and stopped me, wheezing on the sidewalk. The footsteps behind me were then confirmed as Frank, with his voice matching their patter and then his face as I turned around to face him beneath the streetlight. I winced, both from pain and shame as I crouched over, the cold air cooling the burn on my cheeks. 

"Gerard," Frank said, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder. "You didn't have to run away like that."

"I-I did," I said, looking down. "I'm sorry. I should've stayed away like you told me to tonight. I'm really sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Please. Come on, let's go back to my house," Frank said gently, tugging on the fabric of it. "It's cold."

"No, Frank, you--I have to go home. I'm sorry."

"Well come back tomorrow?" 

"I-I will," I said, looking up at him. I leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before slipping out of from under his hand and running the rest of the way back to my car. The stitch in my side nearly stopped me, but I made it, shutting the door and driving off. 

I had ruined it. I hadn't been able to control myself, not for a second. I had gone in to touch him, taken from him after I promised I would only give. And yet Frank still wanted me to come see him the next day. For what reasons, I couldn't understand. I could only beat up myself for my own stupidity, as usual.

I hoped that Frank would like the PS3. If nothing else.


	19. Chapter 19

It was nice to be able to draw Frank again. To sink in, to sharpen a pencil, to hollow out his cheeks and sink his eyes in again. Frank was losing weight, despite the fact that I was still feeding him as much as I had before. He never said that anything was wrong. Most would take this to mean that nothing was wrong, but the way he only ever picked at his food, the way he was always looking warily around spoke for his nerves. I couldn't ask him what was going on. But based on context I could only assume that it had something to do with Mr.Warner. I hadn't seen him around the deli recently, and I pondered if maybe he had given up.It would be nice, certainly and it was at least nice for the moment that he wasn't skulking around the sidewalk, scaring off potential customers and present employees. 

I was not inclined to believe Warner had given up, though. Whereas usually, Frank was always glued to his cellphone, he had been leaving it idle on the table by his bedside. Volume off, face down. It made me think that perhaps Mr.Warner was bothering Frank through wires instead of windows, now. It made sense, after all. It made sense for Warner to have given Frank his phone number. After all, they had slept together. They had had a relationship, at least in some sense. When people slept together, they had to have each other's phone numbers. That was the reasoning. 

Despite how long Frank and I had been involved, in whatever sense we were involved, we didn't have each other's phone numbers. I couldn't contact Frank if I wanted to. I couldn't help but to wonder if perhaps this treatment of me was reactionary after whatever had happened with Mr.Warner. I was the follow up, after all. The "rebound," as they were called in movies and TV shows. I had never been in a situation like this before. I had never been in any situation at all before. Not previously. Frank was the only one, ever.

To be fair, experiencing Frank was likely a unique experience to have, period. It wasn't centered around the way Frank looked, the way he sounded, acted, moved. It had to do with the things about Frank that I didn't want to acknowledge. The facts of his past that, in Mr.Warner's ever-present leer, lingered on into the future. It added another complication to Frank. I couldn't bring myself to blame Frank for it, though. It was impossible for me to resent Frank, to think less of him, to really allow it to affect anything but my concern for Frank. 

Right now, though, I was only really concerned with recapturing an image of Frank on paper that I had neglected to set down so recently. The PS3 had been great, not only because it made Frank happy, but because it kept him still. Occupied. It gave me the freedom to tug the blue-illuminated skin off of his face and onto my paper, the opportunity to be in his space and have all of Frank that I needed. This was all of Frank that I needed, after all. I didn't need to touch him. I only needed to look, to watch, to observe him from a distance. I was several feet away from him and that was all fine. That was as it should be. As it was supposed to be. I did not need to touch Frank. There was no need for it, none at all. 

But there was still a want to touch Frank.

Whenever he tilted his head a certain way, whenever his hair fell in front of his eyes, I always wanted to be the one to brush it away for him. I wanted to reach over and clumsily hold the meat of his hand, the skin and bones apart from his thumb. I knew how video games worked. There was room enough for me to hold him, just a little bit. Or to run my hands down his back, to pet at him through the fabric of his shirt, through cotton thin enough to feel the warmth of his flesh. I would be content with a hand on his knee, with a brush of shoulders, with an embrace. With more than an embrace. I wanted to feel his tongue sliding against mine again, to feel how soft his lips were, how hot the inside of his mouth was. How hot his skin was pressed against mine, his naked chest, his hands touching my bare skin. I felt my armpits becoming sweaty at the thought, and ducked my head down to stare pointedly at my drawing of Frank. In progress, of course.

"Doing your creepy drawing thing again?" Frank called out, not turning his attention away from the screen.

"Y-yeah," I replied, hastily jamming the tip of my pencil into the paper, to make it more convincing that I had in fact been drawing. Not staring at him only for the purpose of fantasizing over touching him. That wasn't the point of staring. That wasn't what I had been given the privilege for. 

"Can I see when you're done?"

I looked down at the paper. It would appear that I had been done for a while. Frank's resemblance was replicated perfectly on the paper, and unless I started in on drawing Frank's bedroom furniture, there was nothing to add to the picture. "S-sure."

"How close is it to being done?" He turned around to look at me this time, blinking at me in the dim light of his room. I could see some Cheeto dust in the corner of his mouth and I had to physically grasp the bottom of my chair to keep myself from lunging forward at him to wipe it off with my finger. With my mouth.

"I-it's done. H-here you go, y-you can see."

Frank took it out of my hands, raising his eyebrows at the page. "It's really good."

"T-thanks."

"Here," he said, setting the page down on the bed and leaning forward, leaning in to kiss me. I quickly turned my head away, attempting to bury my face in the shoulder of my coat. I hadn't taken it off when I came into Frank's basement that night, hadn't even unzipped it. 

"F-frank, no," I said, my voice muffled by the down of my coat. "Please don't."

"Why?" he demanded, grabbing my face and tugging it up to look at him. "What fucking changed? You were more than happy to slide your gross fucking tongue in my mouth before."

"Y-you--"

"S'it because you know I've got other people? Is it because I'm not a fucking virgin? Do you have some thing for pure ass or something like that?"

"I don't want to be other people!" I sputtered, shoving him away from me harder than I had intended. Frank stumbled backward, gaping at me in shock. "I don't want to treat you like they did, I don't--I don't want to use you! I just--I want--"

Frank started laughing at this point, regaining his footing and shoving his hands in his pockets. "Oh man. You've got a hero complex, you're one of those, aren't you? You think you're gonna fuckin' fix me," he said, shaking his head. "Wow. Wow, you're really fuckin' clueless."

"W-wh--"

Frank sighed, stepping towards me again and stroking a hand down my face. "You don't have any influence over me, Gerard. I'm the one controlling you. And you're gonna do what I want. Just like everyone else."

"But what do you want?" I breathed out, feeling my breath bounce off his hand and reflect back onto my face. Humid. I was sweating in my coat, rivulets of sweat sliding down my back.

"I wanna get fucked. And you're gonna fuck me," Frank said simply, roughly letting go of my face and strutting over to his bed. I sat in the chair where he had left me, frozen as he rooted around in his drawer. He yanked out socks and boxer shorts, throwing them on the ground until he pulled out a small black plastic bag, shaking it and grinning. "Don't worry, I'll tell you what to do. Like, I get you're stupid, but it's not that hard. So don't worry."

"Frank, I don't--"

"You what? You don't want to? Bullshit, you've wanted to fuck me since you laid eyes on me. And you fucking know it," he squinted at me from across the room. "Turn off the lights, I don't wanna see your fat face staring at me while you're in me."

I did as he told me, walking as if in a trance to the other side of the room, flicking the switch. It went dark, and I had to squint to make out Frank's form on the bed. My hands were shaking, and I just stood by the door, unable to move over to Frank. He was wrong. He had to be wrong. I may have wanted to touch him before, but it had only been a phase. It had only been a brief infection of lust. I hadn't wanted to touch him when I started observing him. I hadn't, I had only wanted to see him. That was all I wanted to do now. To see him, to watch him. To keep my distance. I had to keep my distance. And as I thought this, as I continued to feel my own sweat soak through my shirt, I heard Frank disrobing, I heard Frank throwing his own clothes to the side of the bed. They were sounds I had heard before. Frank and I had done these things before.

But nothing like this. I had never put myself in Frank, I had never committed that marriage act with him. Consummation. Copulation. Fornication. He had done it with others, and he had told me. And I had promised myself that I wouldn't be like the others, promised myself I would never ruin Frank with that act. Yet here I was. Here I was with Frank nagging and coaxing me to come to bed, insulting me with each sentence of his that I ignored. I felt as though I was underwater, swimming in his words and my own thoughts. I couldn't even hear him. I couldn't move, I wasn't even sure how I was breathing at the moment. All I knew was that I was sweating, endlessly sweating, and then my hands were moving mechanically to unzip my coat, to let it fall on Frank's floor. To let my sweatshirt drop after it.

"Keep your shirt on, I don't wanna feel your gross ass rolls. Fuckin' Star Wars ass Jabba motherfucker," I heard Frank mutter in the dark, his blurry insults falling to the wayside as I heard a small gasp from him. "Come over here already. We don't have all fucking night," he picked up again, his voice sounding weaker than before.

I moved silently to Frank's bed, careful not to trip on anything scattered across the floor. The bed squeaked under my weight, and Frank grabbed at the collar of my t-shirt, tugging my face close as he sloppily shoved his tongue in my mouth. It was less of a kiss and more of a sort of devouring, Frank attacking the insides of my cheeks. He shoved me away quickly, pushing me back to crouch on my knees. I didn't know what to do, nor did I have to. I held my arms up at my sides as he pushed himself up, too, scrabbling at the waistband of my jeans to unbutton them, unzip them, tug them down my thighs.

"Off," he said simply as he rolled back onto the bed. I noticed that he wiped one of his hands off on the blanket as I sat back on my behind to roll my jeans the rest of the way past my ankles. I still had my boxer shorts on. Frank was completely naked beneath me, his thin, pale body shining in the moonlight. I froze, struck with the urge to paint him. "Come on, Gerard," I heard him say, barely above a whisper. "Give me your hand."

I stuck out my right hand obediently, and Frank smeared a dollop of something slimy all over it, making sure to get the majority of it on my fingers. I briefly wondered if they were still stained with graphite, still dirty. I knew they weren't good enough for Frank, even if they were somewhat clean by conventional standards. Frank was taking my other hand and making me rub it across his chest, and I picked up on what he wanted to do quickly enough. My left hand grazed across the bird bones of his ribs, the pinpricks of his nipples. His body was cold and smooth, like marble. Frank was more like marble than he had ever been, the way his figure was being cast in this light.

"Now go in."

"W-what?" I asked, breaking out of my thoughts to look down at Frank. He had folded his arms across his chest and was glaring at me, legs cocked up and spread open. His penis was only half-erect, despite mine straining all the way up towards my stomach. 

"You put your fingers in my ass, dipshit. You're supposed to loosen it up. I mean I already did a little, but you're supposed to. Like, finger me. So do it," he said. All of his words were deliberately over articulated, as though he was speaking to a small child. Then he was tugging at my wrist, pulling my hand down between his legs. He moved them past where I would normally touch, below his testicles, and grabbed my middle finger by the knuckle, having it just skim the dark area between his buttocks. So dark I couldn't see, but just as smooth as the rest of him. "Now put it in," Frank said, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

I took a deep breath and pushed, gently, terrified of hurting Frank. He opened up easily to me, though. He mentioned having "fingering" himself before. Perhaps that was why. Even though my fingers were distinctively chubbier than Frank's, there was hardly any resistance. I now realized why Frank had put all of the liquid on my hands. That, too, was helping to minimize the resistance. Frank made a small grunt as I slid my finger in, going knuckle by knuckle, exploring Frank's insides for the first time. I wondered what color they were. I wondered if the slick, tight composition of this piece of Frank was pink, was red, was white like the rest of him. In this light, everything was dark. 

Frank made a small noise, and I stopped immediately, asking if he was okay. I felt as though I could hear him roll his eyes at me in the dark as he huffed at me to keep going, demanding that I put another finger inside of him. I complied, and he clapped a hand over his mouth as he made a low groan. I spread my fingers out inside of him, feeling the tight muscles resisting against the motion. "Go in and out," I heard Frank say, his voice dropping lower, with the edge of a growl attached to it. "Move them like you're fucking me," he muttered. He changed his positioning on his elbows, rolling his ass down into my hand as he moved his hips in that motion. The fucking motion, what he wanted. I was still sweaty, still swimming in my clothes, and my palm was growing wetter and wetter through sweat and whatever was starting to leak from Frank's ass.

"Another," he breathed out, and I complied. It took more effort to get it in, and Frank tipped his head back and shoved his hips up towards the ceiling, moaning through a muffled mouth. "Shit, shit that's good," he gasped. "Go faster, move em," he said as he reached out an arm to fumble around on the other side of the bed. I heard the sloppy, sliding noises of my fingers in him, interrupted by the crinkling of whatever he was grabbing. Condoms, I quickly realized. "Don't trust you," he snarled as he threw a handful of them at my chest, bouncing off of the soaked t-shirt logo and falling into my lap. 

"Don't trust--"

"Germs, motherfucker. Now get it on and fuck me."

"I--but Frank, Frank, I--"

"What, what is it?" he said impatiently, pushing his hair out of his eyes. I could smell his sweat, too, mixing with my own in the dark.

"I take my clothes off, right?"

"God, you're really--yes, yes, get your clothes off and just fucking do me already. Tired of waiting."

I carefully pulled my fingers out of him, keeping my wet hand away from the rest of me. I didn't want to wipe Frank off of me. Clumsily, I pulled my t-shirt over my head, then worked to unbutton my pants--still my work pants. The cold air of the basement hit my back, turning me clammy as I slid my pants down to my knees, hauling myself around to pull them the rest of the way down past my ankles. I was still wearing my boxer shorts, and I looked at Frank in the dark, hesitating. 

"Hurry up. Everything goes," he snarled before I could say anything. He rustled around impatiently in the sheets as I pushed my boxers down as well, letting my erection stick up fully in the dark. I looked down at it, as well as the small packages in my hand. I didn't know what to do.

"I don't know what to do," I murmured quietly, looking away from Frank.

"You don't know--oh, shit. I should've known you'd be fucking clueless," he snapped, wresting the condoms out of my hand again. He tore one open, wincing quietly as he worked himself upright. Once I felt him touch me, I gasped and grabbed onto his shoulders, causing him to jerk away from me, irritated. "Don't fucking blow all your skeet yet, you haven't even gotten in me." He continued with whatever he was doing, sliding the rubber down over me with clinical, impersonal attention. His hands were small and careful. "Okay, should be good," he said. "Oh, wait," he muttered, getting more liquid and loading a dollop of it over my now latex enclosed penis. "Okay, now."

Frank laid on his back again, carefully positioning his hips on top of a pillow. To make it easier for me, he said. I crawled over him, trying to fumble for his hole in the dark. He became frustrated very quickly with me, grabbing me himself and guiding me to him, placing the tip of it right against where he opened up. "Go in now," he said, taking his hands off of me. My hair was dripping down in my face, my breath was sticking in my throat as I hovered over him. As dark as it was, I could see Frank's face in the dark, frowning at me. His nose crinkled up as a droplet of sweat fell from my hair and hit his chest, but other than that he ignored it, hitching his knees back and resting his ankles upon my back. "Now push," he said, placing his hands on my shoulders and squeezing.

I pushed forward, feeling Frank swallow me up immediately. I gasped out, falling down and burying my face into his shoulder, into the pillow as I pushed my hips forward, slowly moving all the way inside of Frank. I heard him hissing, felt his body tense up and his fingernails digging into my skin. "Oh, god Frank," I managed, clenching at the sheets before I realized I should be touching Frank, grabbing at his sides and sliding my fingers down over his ribs, down to his hips. Our stomachs were pressed together, mine hanging down due to gravity, due to my additional weight. "Frank," I gasped again before I lunged for his mouth, mashing our lips together and trying to touch my tongue over every tooth in his mouth. He slid his tongue along mine briefly, briefly before hitting me with one of his hands, breaking us apart.

"Move, fucker," he ordered, bucking his hips up to illustrate his point. The motion sent my head whirling, and I pulled out slightly, pushed into him again on my own accord.

Hold off, I had to tell myself. Hold off, I repeated out loud, maybe in my head as I rocked forward into him now, feeling him relax under me as I bit down on my lip. "That's good," he said, pulling me down again to kiss him. "Shit, that's good, didn't I tell you?"

Frank had told me, but I had no idea it would be this good, no idea it would feel like this. The way Frank was so hot around me, so slippery, yet holding me tight inside of him. He felt so small beneath me, but he was swearing under his breath, grinding himself into me and frantically jerking himself off as I moved in and out of him. "Frank, Frank, here," I said before pushing him away, grabbing his penis myself and feeling it slide around in my larger hand. It was leaking a great deal, making it easier for me to move my hand. He moaned out in what I took to be approval, lifting his back off of the bed to wrap his arms tighter around me. I felt his thighs squeezed around my hips, his calves clenching at the small of my back as he ensconced himself over my flesh.

"Shit, shit, keep going," Frank groaned as he grabbed at a clump of my hair, pulling hard. I yelped out from the pain, shoving myself deeper in him on accident. "Oh, oh, oh shit, shit, do that, do that," he said, his voice tipping higher, his hips doing their best to match my pace as I kept going into him. And into him, and into him, my hand and hips moving at different, erratic paces as I touched him, fucked him. It was a dirty word, fuck. I was starting to see why Frank used it, the sharp sound of the word fitting this act better than I would realize, better than anything. Being in Frank was better than anything, our skin sliding all over, melting into each other. And then my hips went forward for the last time, and I started shaking inside of Frank, felt everything clench as I came inside of him. He batted my hand away as my body went slack, slapping at my side and ordering me to stay up, to stay up, and then a few slaps later I heard him come as well, felt it as it splattered against my stomach. 

He exhaled after that, what felt like a final exhale as he wiped his hand on my back. I found my face buried in his shoulder again, slowly breathing in the smell of his sweat. "Off," I heard him say. "Off, jesus, get off of me, fatass."

I did as he said, rolling my torso off of his, rolling onto my back and staring up at his ceiling, seeing it really for the first time. I hadn't realized I had still been inside of him, but I slid out with a squicking sound. I had long since gone soft, and the used condom skidded on the way out. It almost fell off, and I carefully held it on me as I crossed my ankles near the foot of his bed, folding my arms across my chest and lying very still, very silent. Frank was moving around beside me, leaning down over the edge of the bed to search for something. He returned with a towel, mopping semen off of his stomach and then flinging it over to me.

"Augh, dude, seriously? Pull that shit off," Frank grimaced, gesturing towards my pelvic area. "You don't just let it sit there, you throw it away."

'S-sorry," I quickly jerked to sit up, tugging it off ineptly. I wasn't much better at taking it off then I was at putting at on, although I did manage to find Frank's garbage can and fling it in there. It hit the metal walls with a sad, wet smack.

Frank then tossed the towel at me. "Here, use the whole thing. Gonna need to dry off your sweaty ass, god, you're gross. I fucking smell like you."

"I-I smell like you too," I offered as I took the towel from him. Frank glared at me, offended. 

"That's not a good thing."

"O-oh."

I dried the sweat off of me, although I didn't see how it would do much good. My clothes were still soggy, lying on the floor in a heap. They would stay sweaty when I put them on again. Frank was getting a clean shirt and set of pajamas out of his drawer, sighing as he tugged them on. "So what did you think? Was losing your virginity nice, loser?"

"I-I-what? O-oh, yes. I-it was nice."

Nice didn't describe what it had been like inside of Frank, what the act that had just been committed felt like. It had been the greatest thing I'd ever felt, although I understood the consequences. I had betrayed my intentions, lumped myself in with every other man Frank had touched. But I didn't feel guilty. What Frank and I had done, Frank and I hadn't done anything in the same vein as what he had done with those other men. It was different. It had been special.

"What?" Frank asked, just as I had dropped the towel on the floor, beginning to fumble around for my boxers, at least. 

"W-what? Did I, did I do something?"

"You just said "it was special," are you seriously starting in with shit that gay?" he scowled.

"I-I did?" It seemed as though my internal thoughts had stepped out of my mouth and through the wide-swinging doors of my mouth. 

Frank sighed. "Dude, seriously, don't...don't start in with that emotional bullshit. I don't do that, that's not my deal. Like, if you wanna tell yourself that, it's cool, but...just don't. Not around me, don't like...say shit."

"But--"

"Don't ask questions, either."

I nodded, not that he could see me, and started to pull my clothes back on. I heard Frank criticize me from behind my back, commenting on the width of my backside, my love handles, how bad I smelled and how gross it had been for him to feel my fat sliding against him. I only barely heard him, though. I was still thinking about what had just happened, my cold, still sweaty clothes skidding on my equally clammy skin. I had left my socks on during the act, so I didn't have to search for those. It allowed me to get dressed quickly, and to hover at the bottom of Frank's bed, standing there and wringing my hands. Frank was still cleaning up the bed, straightening the sheets and putting things away. He was quick, effective, and was crawling in bed minutes later. I watched him from the edge, unsure of what to do next. He noticed.

"And what do you want now, creepy? No more room in my ass for round two, sorry. Better get it back down," he said, tugging the comforter up to his chin.

"I was wondering if...if, if maybe..."

"What? What do you want?"

"C-can I...can I sleep with you? F-for just a little while?"

Frank rolled his eyes, huffing and sliding his hand down his face. "I guess. You better be the fuck out of here by like, four in the morning though. I'm not getting caught with you in my fucking bed."

I couldn't believe what he said at first. "S-so I can?"

"Yeah, whatever."

I shuffled over to his bed, feeling it creak again beneath me, but in a different context now. Frank was on his side, turned away from me, and I picked up the comforter, letting myself now crawl beneath it. I slid across the mattress, letting myself fit in behind Frank. He didn't resist, I only heard him sigh as I fit his back into my stomach, wrapping my arms around his front and pulling him close. I could feel his breathing, slow and steady as opposed to the rapid panting of before. "Frank," I mumbled, rubbing my thumb over the exposed skin above the waistband of his pajamas.

"Don't. None of that shit. If you want to sleep, sleep."

"I-I'll sleep. I'm sorry. Um, g-goodnight, Frank."

"Whatever."

I listened to his breathing slow down for a while after that, minutes and minutes crawling by until mine finally slowed down as well, and I fell to sleep alongside him. For the first time, but hopefully not the last.


	20. Chapter 20

I woke up to Frank's alarm clock going off, red and blaring as I rolled over to face it. My arms were empty, and my shirt had soaked itself with sweat again while I had been sleeping. But my arms, my arms were empty. Frank wasn't there. I patted the mattress frantically, finding it to still be warm, then bolted up in bed, sheet falling down my chest to pile in my lap. I blinked in the darkness of his bedroom. It was 4:15 in the morning, dawn had not yet come. The television was off, although I remembered Frank had left it on last night. Perhaps I just hadn't remembered him getting up to turn it off. But Frank wasn't here. Frank wasn't here, and I was sure of the fact that I did not remember him leaving. 

"Frank?" I said tentatively in the darkness. No response came, but I hadn't expected it to. "Frank?" I tried again, a little louder.

It was then that the door to his room was wrenched open, Frank sticking his head in. "Jesus fucking Christ, shut up!" he hissed. "You want my parents to come down?" he said before shutting the door again. 

So Frank was here. Just not in the room. Which meant I could wait for him, I could of course wait for him. It just felt strange to be in Frank's bed without having Frank beside me. 

"Frank!" I blurted again as he returned to the room. I was careful to keep my voice to a whisper, keeping in line with Frank's directions. "Frank, w-where were you?"

He frowned at me. "I was in the bathroom, freak. I had to fucking piss. Now get up, it's time for you to go."

"G-go? B-but it's--"

"Early? Yeah, no shit. That's why it's time for you to get the hell out of my house. Get your shit together."

I frowned too, nodding at him as I slid out of bed, my socked feet gently hitting the plush of his carpeting. My backpack was where I had left it, the page I'd been working on a little torn. I closed my sketchbook, picking up my pencils from the ground and putting them back in their pouch. I hadn't realized how much of a mess Frank and I had left behind after what we had done last night. Even the room smelled stale. It was overwhelmingly Frank, but now a faint streak of my basement's smell was permeating it. It was as though I had left a part of myself here, in Frank's room. I had inside Frank. 

I gathered my things together, putting my backpack on my shoulders after my coat and then walking over to Frank, putting a hand on his shoulder and kissing him. His lips didn't move to match mine, and I pulled back to look at him. He didn't appear pleased. I had only been doing what I'd seen in the movies, though. After a night together, after intercourse had been achieved, the parties involved always kissed each other in the morning. They always snuggled. Snuggling, I realized. Perhaps that was what I needed to do.

"C-can we g-go back to your bed for, for a few minutes?" I asked, trying to smile at him. The fact that I had already put my sneakers on again wasn't an issue to me. 

Frank sighed, rolling his eyes. "Gerard, quit it. I'll...walk you out to your car or whatever. But none of that other bullshit. Come on." 

Frank opened up the window as he always did, setting up the chair. I saw that Frank had shoes on as well, a pair of beat-up athletic shoes I had never seen him wear before. He climbed out before I did, and I followed him. Jersey was beginning its crawl into springtime, and the grass was wet with dew. As was the air, cool and clammy in the early hours of morning. Like Frank and I had been last night, entangled soggy in each other. I shivered in my coat. I wasn't cold. Simply overcome, overcome with Frank. As I'd always been, and as I was even more so now. Frank asked me where my car was parked, and we walked to it in silence.

Our shoes squeaked in the wet grass, and Frank's hands were jammed into his pockets. I mirrored him, not wanting to take the risk of holding his hand. I knew he would reject it. There wasn't so much time for it anyway, as Frank and I reached my car in a relatively short time frame. I had parked farther away than usual, but it was still near. At least, near enough. I unlocked the doors, setting my backpack down in the front seat, and then seeing that Frank had slumped against the driver's side door.

"So was it good?" he asked, arms crossed over his chest.

"Good?"

"Yeah, the fucking. Did you like it, did I do a good job or whatever?" Frank's tone was different than it normally was, softer and reduced. He was far less cocky, and even his posture wasn't as confident. He was slouched, slumped over, folded inside of his sweatshirt. It was the same one I'd first seen him in. The black hoodie from months ago, I realized. It had now been months since I had first caught sight of Frank.

"Frank, it--of course it was. O-of course you...Frank, it was...it was wonderful," I stammered, limply moving a hand in half-hearted gesture. "Y-you're wonderful. A-all, everything about, about you."

Frank looked at me, sighing. "Thanks for the Playstation, by the way."

"I love you," I found myself saying. 

My words hung heavy in the dim morning light, stuck in the air between me and Frank. I didn't know where they had come from. I didn't know their root, didn't know what had caused me to let them tumble out from inside of me. But they had already been settled in my chest for a long time. They had been there since the first day, I believed. For all the months that had passed, they had only grown more prominent, swelling and swelling until now when they finally saw fit to escape. It made sense, I supposed. And there was no doubting the truth of it. I did love Frank. There was so much about him, too much. Too much for me to handle. He was the primary existence in my life, and I wasn't even sure if the word "love" encompassed my feelings for him. I didn't think any word really could.

Frank stared at the pavement, shaking his head slightly. "Yeah, I bet you do," he sighed, moving away from my car door. He got up on his toes to kiss me, fleeting on my mouth. "You're...shit, whatever," he said, cutting off his own sentence. "You...you, have a safe drive home. Or whatever. I have to go, I'll...yeah. Bye."

"I, I'll see you later? Y-you're coming as you usually do, you're doing that today, right? Aren't you? W-will you still come to the--"

"Yeah, I'll be there."

"For sure?"

"For sure. Bye, Gerard," Frank waved before turning around to walk back to his house, and I got in my car, starting the ignition and backing out of the space. 

A CD started blaring in the stereo as soon as I started my car, and I realized it was one of Frank's that he had left behind. It was although he had left a part of himself with me, even if it had been only a mistake or a misplacement. I didn't turn it down as I pulled out of his neighborhood, squinting at another pair of headlights entering the cul de sac as I exited it. Someone else was out late, I presumed. Or early. Maybe they were entangled in a lover as I was--because, perhaps, that was now what Frank had become to me? No longer an impossible still life, no longer an untouchable mystery. I knew Frank now.

I knew the sounds he made, the way he smelled, felt, the way his body was formed both outside and inside. We were bound now, in the oldest form of flesh on flesh that was possible. Frank had given me every first experience, and every one had been brilliant. Not exclusive to sex. But every time I saw him, things were brilliant. Perfect. My heart settled warm in my chest, and I was happy. The world was aligned when he was in it, and it would only be a few hours before I saw him again, and the axis ticked into its rightful place once more.

I hummed along with Frank's music, tapping my fingers to the beat blaring out of my stereo as I turned onto the highway, feeling better than I ever had. 

It felt as though things may now have been aligned permanently.


	21. Chapter 21

Things had been shaken out of alignment.

Things had been shaken far, far out of alignment.

Frank hadn't shown up as he promised he would.

It was two hours past when Frank would have normally appeared at the counter in front of me, perhaps accompanied by a handful of snide comments, perhaps accompanied by more pleasant things. After last night, thee should have been more pleasant things. Or even unpleasant. He could criticize how I had been, what I had done with him. He could attack anything he wanted. All I wanted was to hear him call out those remarks at me, to hear him scold me, berate me, say anything. Anything at all, I just wanted him to be here. He had promised to be here. There was no reason that he shouldn't be here, none at all. It was past the time a detention should have let out at school, even if he had had one of those burdening him. It was past the time of him being late, and above all, he had promised.

He had promised.

I wrung my hands behind the register, knowing I had only an hour left before I clocked out, knowing that time was dwindling before I was going to be made to leave here. It wasn't an option of me staying later, either. I had closing shift. There was only half an hour left of me at the register, and then the store would close and it would be time for me to help clean. Cleaning was pointless, I thought, cleaning wouldn't lead me to discover the reason for Frank's absence. Nothing was to be done. I could only wait a little while longer, and wait for Frank to hopefully come through the doors.

All I could think of right now was where Frank could be, what could have happened to him. There was a feeling in my stomach, something deep and solid that things had gone wrong in the hours we'd been apart from each other. It was the only thing that could explain it. Aside from that, it was all that I wanted to use to justify the situation. It couldn't be that Frank was simply dissatisfied with what we had done with each other. It wasn't that. Frank had seemed fine when I left this morning. He had been exhausted, but for once he almost seemed happy with me. He was calm, at least, and hadn't had a lot to say that was so negative. And he had promised to see me. That was what it all kept coming back to. Frank had promised to see me tonight. He wouldn't break that.

Earlier, my mind had been stuck revolving around far more pleasant things. The way that Frank had sounded when we had done what we'd done, the way he'd felt beneath me. Around me, both in the way his arms and legs wrapped themselves around my back, my hips, and in the way that the muscles of his insides had molded themselves to fit around my part. That was one thing all of the videos I'd watched had never explained, or even indicated towards. It felt good, in the carnal way that a hand did, but it was more than that. It was a closeness to be attained, a bond that couldn't be achieved through any other act, not a one. 

All the bucking and fucking that occurred in the pornography videos, that wasn't what Frank and I had done. Frank and I had consumed each other in a different sense, and although I had been the one to penetrate him, he had done more to penetrate me, with the sounds he made penetrating my ears, his smell to my nose, and his tongue to my mouth. It was a balance. It had been a balance we'd achieved. Frank couldn't resent me for it. Not only for the fact that he'd done it so many times before, with so many other people, but also because I hadn't pushed. He had offered, demanded even. So he couldn't say that it was a fault of mine for pursuing him, or pushing him. I hadn't done such things. It wasn't me that had made any effort to enter him. He had taken me into himself.

The minutes dragged on, still with no sight or sign of Frank. A few customers blew their way through the line, taking coffee, taking cookies, taking sandwiches. A late cold front had blown through, and everyone was bundled up more than they usually had been. Hats, scarves, all the like. I knew I would be cold when I left, but I didn't care. I kept my head down, tapped at the cash register, and handled the masses as I always did. Frank's face didn't pass through at any point, and I couldn't bring myself to care about anyone else. And when I checked out for the night, balling up my apron, I didn't even care for myself as I walked out into the cold without a jacket, in short sleeves, with nothing to protect me from the chill at all.

My jacket was left in my car, still stiff with sweat from last night. I hadn't wanted to bring it into work with me, not wanting to run the risk of its smell being tainted by my workplace. I grabbed it as soon as I had shut the door to my car, pulling it close to my face and inhaling. It still smelled like Frank, and like last night. I unzipped it, letting my dirty t-shirt, pants, underwear from last night be exposed. I had kept them in the coat as a sort of encasement. The clothes reeked of sweat, of semen, of me and of Frank. They were the evidence of what we had done together. I held the laundry close to me, squeezing it tight in the dark and inhaling as much as I could, inhaling until the scent ceased to be distinctive anymore. I sighed then, setting it down to start my car, to take the interstate home alone.

I didn't plan on driving to Frank's house. I understood that if he hadn't come today, after all the hours, then there really couldn't be anything wrong. I couldn't delude myself into thinking that. It was just me who was wrong. I had made a mistake, somehow, and now I was stripped of the privilege to visit him. But I had enough memories to last me at least for a little while. I still had to draw, after all. To paint. To record what had happened in the best way I knew how. I would obscure myself from all of the pictures, of course, but I needed to remember what Frank had been like. I had a feeling that I was going to need to delve into the abstract if I hoped to truly document the way Frank had been. Realism couldn't explain it.

My parents' car wasn't home when I pulled up to my house, and I took my usual place in the far half of the driveway. The house was dark, and I figured that the family had gone out without me. Perhaps to dinner. They had grown most accustomed to me having work now, to me simply not being around. Detached from the nest, I supposed. My key slid into the lock and the door opened up into a mostly dark interior. It wasn't as empty as I had seen from the outside, the television was flickering in the living room. I could hear it droning faintly, the living room lit up from time to time in white flashes. It was like lightning, although it was too early in spring for any Jersey storms to really hit yet. 

Something did hit, though. Something hit me in my collarbone, fists in the collar of my work shirt. I dropped the laundry from my car, dropped my bag on the ground as I was pinned against the wall of my hallway. "What the hell did you do with that kid, Gerard?"

It was Mikey, his glasses flashing in the dim light. He was the one holding me down, spit flying in my face as he growled at me in the darkness. "I swear to god, Gerard, you fuck up a little before. But this is too much. Where the hell is he, is he still in your car? Is he in our house? What the fuck did you do?"

"Mikey, wh-what are you talking about?" I whimpered, trying to catch my breath. One of Mikey's arms was pressing against my windpipe, making it difficult for me to take in any air. "What kid?"

"That Frank kid you've been following in. He's all over the news, Gerard, don't pretend you don't know anything, now where the hell is he?"

My heart stopped.

"T-the news? Mikey, no, I've been at work all day, w-what, what--"

I broke off at that point, Mikey's words hitting me. Frank was missing. Frank was on the news. Something had happened to Frank. I didn't know if I had stopped breathing or not, but I felt Mikey release me and my knees hit the floor. I was crying, I couldn't see straight in the darkness, or maybe it was the dizziness. "So you don't know?" I heard Mikey say above me. "Gerard, you don't know anything?"

I shook my head, incapable of a response. I felt myself blubber something, incoherent, and Mikey muttered something equally incoherent. But I felt him haul me up by the arm, felt my shoes route down the hall into the living room. Mikey dropped me down onto the couch, sitting beside me. Commercials flashed on the television, for what seemed like hours until the news broadcast clipped back in. The reporter shuffled papers on the screen, and a picture of Frank came up in the right hand corner. I recognized it from the yearbook and felt myself sobbing, with Mikey's hand on my back. I only caught a few words of the broadcast, such as the fact that there'd been a note left, it was being fingerprinted, Frank hadn't been seen, Frank hadn't attended school. They were fingerprinting the note, checking for evidence now. But Frank was gone. Frank had been kidnapped, according to the broadcast. 

He hadn't been seen since this morning. He had been taken from his neighborhood, his parents last seeing him the night before. They had been out. I knew they had been out, that was why I had been able to see Frank in the first place. And it wasn't true that no one had seen him since the night before. I had seen Frank. He had been safe until early this morning, the dark hours when I left him. The television had called for anyone who knew anything to come forward, but I knew I couldn't. As it was read on the screen, Mikey attacked me again, demanding if I knew anything. I shook my head, speechless. I was still shaking my head when I found myself in my basement some time later, helpless as to how I got there, helpless in knowing what to do.

Frank had been taken. 

I folded all my clothes on my bed, placing a hand on them and letting it rest. I couldn't pick out what could've happened to Frank. I didn't know where he could be, who could have taken him, what events could have added up...But no.

I took my hand away from the clothes, clapping it over my mouth. I did know. I knew exactly what happened. I just hadn't been looking. The blurred events from earlier rushed back into my head, momentarily pushing out the memories of my morning with Frank, and filling in the details of someone else's morning with Frank. The headlights, belonging to a silver car. Silver. I had only just caught the color in the light, but it had been silver. A sedan. The headlights entering as I was exiting. The scarves. Beneath scarves and hats, in the deli, change falling into my hand. Eyes squinting out of clothes covering a face. No hostility, but the same beady eyes that so often came into the shop, blazing. Crazy. He had been banned, but he'd snuck in. Calm. He'd been calm. He'd only be calm if he'd garnered revenge against Frank. Frank. Warner.

Warner had taken Frank. He'd been there the whole time, and I was the one who hadn't been there to notice.

I had been too caught up in watching Frank to realize that Frank had been stolen out of sight.


	22. Chapter 22

I kicked up all my sketchbooks, wrenching out pages, throwing pens and pencils against my wall. Frantically, I switched on the TV in my room, changing channels back and forth between the different news stations, sitting through useless broadcasts of weather, of other events, waiting for any news on Frank. There had been nothing. His name occasionally flashed by on the banner ticking beneath the screen, but there was nothing besides that. Nothing. And I could do nothing. I was trapped in a basement, stuck waiting for glimpses and flashes of Frank. Images featuring a school picture that barely even looked like him. It was blurry, it didn't even have the decency of being in color. How was one supposed to identify Frank without even having a full image of him? He had dark hair, certainly, and black and white could show that. But it couldn't show the exact shade of brown it showed up as, the exact color of his skin, the way his wrists could slip out from beneath his jacket--I knew I would be able to recognize him by that pigment alone. In the light, in darkness, it wouldn't matter. I could see Frank from a mile in any setting.

There was the way his clothes hung off of him, the varying sag between the different pants he wore--I knew them all. No matter what he was in, even if he had been changed into costume, if his hair had been bleached, if he'd been covered from head to toe in a garbage bag, I knew I would still recognize him, if only by his gait. His height, his weight, the way he walked. I had handled him in my eyes for so long, beneath my hands for a shorter time, but I knew. Whoever was on his case wouldn't have a clue as to what they were seeing. Not with what they were going off of, not with how strange Frank had to be beneath their eyes. He was nothing to them, and everything to me. But he was lost to me now.

All I had was pages and pages of useless recreations of his face, his body. A million sketches of his body, a million rough imprints on paper with nothing corporeal to be had about them. I could revisit his face from every angle, but I would find nothing. I heard Mikey knocking at the door, I think. Briefly, at some point in the night. The night dragged on until all regular programming ceased and every channel transformed itself into an infomercial station. I alternated between periods of staring at the screen and periods of kicking up, rumpling up papers, making my room more of a mess than it already was. It wasn't hardly a room at this point. It was a prison, trapping me within and keeping me from following Frank to wherever he may be, wherever he had been lost to.

I needed to find Frank. The policemen wouldn't be able to do it, I realized. And it was my responsibility. Frank was my responsibility, in the way that wolves look after their partners after mating. I didn't have to worry about Frank carrying my brood, but there was plenty else to worry about. Frank and I were hardly wolves, closer to rabbits lying meek and helpless in the grass. Frank had been taken up by a fox, wrenched out of the burrows of our basements by some set of foreign jaws. I had only ever dug holes for him and I, providing safe spaces and marks in the sand where we hunkered down, desperate. Or maybe I was the only one who had ever been desperate. Frank had been self sufficient enough. I'd always had the dependency on him.

It was a dependency of livelihood, of the way I made my way in the world and the way I needed him to make a way. I would have flunked out of college if not for him, and though I was teetering on the edge now, I vowed to skip once the sun came up. I had other assignments to contend with. I had to find Frank, I had to make my way around his haunts. Warner's haunts. Places I didn't know, places I couldn't begin to figure out. Perhaps the mall, I thought at first. But then I realized it was more of a perhaps not, there was no way Warner would parade Frank around like a prize. No one had seen Frank, according to the news. He'd been missing. So did I even have a chance of finding him at all, I wondered? Was he simply lost to me?

I looked down at all my papers again, picking up the most recent drawing and running my fingers over it. It was the last drawing I'd done before Frank and I had made love. It was the sketch that had been interrupted, and I saw right where the lines stopped. I could pinpoint the moment in an image where Frank had come to me, initiated that contact that would go so far beyond what I'd ever expected with him. Contact I may not experience again, I realized as a sob choked up in my throat. I refrained from crumpling the drawing up, refrained from throwing it against the wall. I set it down on the desk with careful, shaky hands. I couldn't be frivolous with what I had left of Frank.

Frank, sure to be locked away in a basement somewhere. As Warner did what? As he wandered around freely, into coffee shops with hats on, into department stores with scarves? Was he visiting the drugstore, picking up hair dye to bleach the brown out of Frank's hair? Was he changing Frank's identity in that urban legend sort of way? It had been broadcast on the news all the time when I was young, warning mothers to not let their children into bathrooms by themselves, lest they be snapped up by some cloaked villain. 

Warner was certainly villainous, in the sallow of his skin, the darkness around his eyes. He was taller than me, greatly taller than Frank. And bulky. He wasn't heavy, but he wasn't thin, either. It had to do with the broadness of his shoulders, the way he threw his weight around in small spaces. He had been Frank's teacher once, and I couldn't imagine that man gently lecturing Shakespeare. I thought of him to be the type of teacher who would've scorned his every student. The type who would've taken animosity towards me and who, for whatever reason, took obsession with Frank. I wondered how long it had been that the alcohol had seeped out of the fabric of his sweater vests. It was his own fault, that was. He couldn't blame Frank for all of his problems. It was a cheap way to go.

I found that my hands had started creating Warner on paper, moving pencils by their own way, erasing as I thought. There were those shoulders, the way they hunched around his face, the way his nose stuck up in the air. His hair was greasy, and so was his skin. If I'd had oil paint, it would've been easy to capture the shine of it. There were his clothes, once professional and now in disrepair. Dirty in a way similar to mine. The filth was there, but the smell was different. Mine was sweat, his was a brewery. I wondered if Frank had a thing for that. I shook my head when the image of Warner in my head flashed to Warner naked, hovering over Frank's smaller body. I knew Frank's by heart. Warner's was foreign. But I knew it was ugly. I didn't need to see it.

Warner appeared on my paper at different forms, different angles. Looking up, down, screaming, squinting. I hadn't seen him by so many angles, but I'd seen enough. Setting my pencil down, I went upstairs to the living room, grabbing the student directory from the shelf where it sat. The house was completely dark now, with no television set blaring, no Mikey to catch me around corners. It was early in the morning, and it didn't feel as thought it had only been twenty four hours since I had last seen Frank. The television had mentioned he was the son of a prominent businessman. I supposed that was why the media had picked up on his disappearance so quickly. It also fit why his parents had never been home.

I took it back down to my room, flipping through the pages for a Warner. There was Steven Warner, a senior. Ashley Warner, a junior that I presumed his sister. A Michael Warner, freshman, and Toby and Keith Warner. Also freshmen, and apparently identical twins. It made sense. The name was common enough. The Catholic school was large, and I moved past the student section, delving into the teachers. There was Peggy Warner, a matronly looking art teacher. And then, Greg Warner. English 9, English 9H. He didn't have a phone number listed. But I had a name now. A first name, not simply a Warner. 

I made a second trip upstairs, this time taking the phonebook down to my basement with me. 

Warner would be found. And with him, Frank.


	23. Chapter 23

For once, I actually took coffee at the gas station near my house before setting out to drive for the day. Normally I never bought it, never drank it. I hated the taste, I hated the burn of it, and even at work I only ever poured the leftovers down the drain. It wasn't my cup of tea. Well, obviously. It wasn't tea. It was coffee. But today, I needed it. I couldn't be burdened down by lack of sleep. I needed to be awake. I needed to be hard boiled and ready to find Warner. I needed a full tank of gas, both in my car and in my veins. I didn't know how much ground I would be covering today, but I would start where I was standing right now. I thrust my paper at the cashier of the gas station, asking if he had seen this man. Or if he had seen this boy, I followed up, presenting a picture of Frank. The cashier squinted at me, untrusting, and told me that no, he hadn't. I nodded and went back to my car.

I had an address scribbled next to me, topping the pile of papers on my passenger seat, no longer occupied by Frank. It had Warner's address, but I couldn't have any idea if it was a current one or not. I hoped that the early hour of the morning would protect me, both by cloaking me in its remaining darkness as well as giving me time. Time that Frank might still be in Jersey. I knew Warner couldn't take him on a train, a taxi, but New York City was still so close to us. And if Frank went there, I knew he would be lost. No one who went into that city with the intention of disappearing ever came out. I laughed to myself in my car, remembering the time long ago when I had wanted to disappear into that city, for school. That wasn't my place. My place was by Frank's side.

I needed to find that side, find his bird bones and touch our ribcages together again. To align our bodies the way we had that morning in bed, his head tucked under my chin. His hair had scratched and tickled at my nose, but I held back my sneezes. I didn't expel a thing from myself, only took Frank in. He had been warm. He had been safe then. And how many hours had it been, I wondered? How many hours, minutes after I said goodbye to him yesterday morning had he been taken away? Oh, it had to have been minutes. I was sure it had been minutes. 

The memory of leaving Frank's neighborhood came to me then. The minute of me pulling out of his cul de sac, the other flash of headlights I had seen. That had been Warner. It had to have been. I could squint through the muddle of my head, see the tint of that car under the streetlights. Silver. That was what it had been. So indeed, it had been mere minutes between me leaving Frank and Warner snatching Frank. He'd been vulnerable on the street, after all. A consequence of me. Me parking too far away, Frank being required to follow me to the car. It was my fault, then. I held the guilt for Frank being taken.

I clenched my hands tighter on the wheel.

So that, then, was why the responsibility of finding Frank fell on me.

I pulled into the neighborhood Warner was supposed to live in, circling around his apartment complex and looking for a car that resembled his. I saw nothing. I drove across the street, around the parking garages and lots in the area. Nothing. I parked in front of it, eventually, and tried to buzz my way up to Warner's room. There was no response. A janitor came up to me, asking why I was there so early. I showed him the picture of Warner, the picture of Frank. I asked him if he'd seen them. The janitor shook his head. "Not for a few days," he said. "That one," he pointed at Frank, "hasn't been around since January. I figured this guy," he said, pointing at Warner, "was givin' him weed or something. Maybe booze. That guy was bad news, I think the landlord booted him. Backed on rent or somethin'. Anyway, it's a bad building," the janitor said, gesturing at the dilapidated stairs he had been moving to sweep. "Doesn't attract anyone good."

I nodded, thanked the janitor, and ducked out to my car. I didn't know where I was supposed to go from here. I started up my car and started aimlessly through Jersey. With every nearby store to Warner's apartment, I went inside and shook papers in front of people's faces. I begged if they had seen him, seen either of them. In gas stations, in Wal-Marts, in fast food restaurants, they all glared at me, frowned on me. One of them asked if it was that kid from the news, and I said yes. They asked who the other guy was, who Warner was. I couldn't manage to explain without bursting into tears, and the girl behind the Burger King counter patted me on the back, gave me a coffee and sent me out into the cold again.

There was a new steaming cup in my hand after that, and there were four more later. That day, I spent the whole day out on the streets. I took my bathroom breaks when I needed them, in between interrogations of restaurant workers. I urinated at the Walgreens, asked the old woman if she'd seen anyone. She mentioned she had seen Warner, and my heart skipped out of my chest. Until she said she'd seen him a week ago. I nodded, discouraged. That was all I could do, at every place I visited. There was no explanation as to what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go. Belleville wasn't so huge. I could cover Belleville in a day, cover every store. I drove past several police cars that day, and wondered if perhaps they had seen anything yet. 

I stopped into a coffee shop, not my own, but one on the other side of town, and sat down to watch the news. I had purchased a bagel to pay for my loitering, but I couldn't eat it. I could only pick it apart with nervous fingers, tear the stale bread into flakes on a napkin. I waited for Frank's picture to come on the screen. It never did, not for the whole hour that I watched. It never did, not until I was about to leave in frustration, when his school photo briefly came on the screen, repeating some scanty information from yesterday, again asking for leads. There had apparently been a fire somewhere today, and a large traffic problem. That had taken up the majority of the news. Not Frank.

I threw away my uneaten food in frustration, shoving my hands back into my pockets to find my keys as I stomped back out into the cold. If I didn't know I would get sick, I would get cigarettes. To have a little memory of Frank, of his smell. But I couldn't do that. I had to save all my money for gas. I didn't know how much driving was left ahead of me. It was getting late, and I was starting to run out of places to look. It was getting dark, it was getting harder to see. I didn't know where they would stay. I didn't have any idea. Would it be a hotel, a motel? Some run-down building? Would they still be in Belleville, would they have gone somewhere else? 

I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I couldn't figure out where they would be, I didn't even know why I was doing this in the first place. I couldn't fight Warner if it came down to it, I knew that. I couldn't defend Frank. And god, god only knew that Warner had probably already hurt Frank. He was crazy, he was bad. He would have hurt Frank. He had a vengeance against him. That was the point of all of this, wasn't it? That Warner had a score to settle? I shivered as I wondered if I might not be part of that score, too. If Warner saw me as the one who had taken Frank away from him. But my own safety wasn't the priority right now. In my car, in my coat, cozy and zipped up to my chin, I was safe. But who knew where Frank was. If Warner had taken him out in what I'd left him in this morning, and I couldn't even remember if he had been wearing sneakers.

Frank must be so cold right now.

I started driving again, going down around the haunts I normally frequented. The places I knew Frank did, too. It was getting later and later, the clock on my car reading past ten. I cruised past Frank's school, wondering if perhaps Warner had taken him there. To leave a mark, or make a statement, or do something of the like. But the grounds were deserted. I drove around to the back and parked my car again, turning the lights off and slumping in a space. I didn't know what I was thinking. Warner wouldn't be here, it wouldn't make sense for him to be here. What would he do? Rob his old office? No, there was no sense to be had in that.I slumped in the seat, looking around in the dark. There weren't any other cars in the lot. No silver one, no, I didn't have that luck. The great plot twist wasn't going to happen, not here.

I think I fell asleep.

I did fall asleep, for it was reading two on my dashboard when I shook myself out of stasis again. Time wasted. Anything could have happened in those hours, I scolded myself, and started up my car again. The gas meter was reading low, and I puttered over to the nearest station. The one where I had purchased Frank's cigarettes for him before. It seemed longer ago than it really had been. As though it had been years, not months. Weeks, even. It added up to weeks, although that wasn't saying much. Everything added up into weeks when you thought about it. Days, weeks, months, they all made up years. But then, it didn't seem that I had been through years of living without Frank. It was like I had only survived a week before meeting Frank, a quick blur of existence. And then he came. Purpose arriving with delay. 

Once my car was filled up, I got back inside and attempted to turn back onto the main highway. I had intended to turn back onto the main highway, at least until I saw a side road. A small, dingy side road, close in proximity to this gas station as well as the deli, the school. There was a sign attached to it. O'Malley Drive. O'Malley Motel in neon, beneath it. It was slowly blinking in and out of pink, advertising a vacancy. For all of the times I had driven down this way, I had never seen it. Of course, it was probably because in the daytime the neon sign was turned off. It was also likely due to the fact that it was a very well hidden road, and I had never been looking for motels before. In the daytime, a couple weeks ago, maybe, I would have thought nothing of it. But now, I was thinking everything of it.

It of course wouldn't fit for Warner to go away so quickly. He was the type to loiter around, to resist in place and create a statement. That was evidenced clearly by the way he had been hanging around the deli. So maybe he wouldn't have been so quick to leave Belleville. It also wouldn't make sense for him to take Frank somewhere nice. No brand-name hotels, no easily spotted motels. Not if he didn't want to be noticed, not if he didn't want someone to catch on that the boy he was dragging around was the same boy that was all over the news right now. Or at least a little bit on the news. Kidnappings happened all the time in Jersey, and Frank's only real benefit was that he had been white and from apparently important parents. If not for that, Frank would have been completely lost. I wouldn't have known at all, I realized. I would've just thought Frank had left me.

I had thought Frank had left me at first, and I shook my head to try and forget my own fault. If not for seeing the news, if not for Mikey, I wouldn't have even known that Frank had gone away. I would've blamed it on myself, blamed it on Frank rejecting me romantically. Romance wasn't the important factor. Frank's safety took priority, and how selfish of me it had been to think I was important enough to cause Frank's disappearance. I wasn't sure what to even think. All I could even feel was guilt. Sick, sinking guilt in the pit of my stomach. I had gone wrong in some way, in every way. It seemed as though the only way I could deal with what was going on was to blame myself, I thought as I flicked my turn signal on and drove up the road. It was a shot in the dark, the literal dark as the streetlights waned with distance. I could see the motel ahead, though, and I was hoping I'd see more than just the motel when I got closer.

The road was narrow, and the trees were pressed in close. My car hit a pothole, and that combined with a blaring horn nearly sent me wheeling into the trees. I strained around in my car seat after slamming on the brakes, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver that had nearly hit me. They were speeding down the road, flashing beneath the sparse streetlights. I saw the shape of it, and I swore the car was shining silver in the yellow of the streetlights. That was the "more" I had been hoping to see. I couldn't know if it was Warner, I couldn't know if it was exact, but it was the closes thing I'd had all day. It was all I had to go off of.

My shoe slammed on the gas pedal and I barreled down the rest of the way to the motel shining at the end of the road.

I would go off of whatever I had.


	24. Chapter 24

My resolve faded somewhat as I pulled into a space and shut off my car, stepping outside into the cold, dark night. I realized again that I was just one person, one single person standing alone outside in the dark, with no weapon except for mitten-covered hands. I should have left my mittens in the car. It was too late, though, my keys already dropped deep into a pocket as I opened the broken screen door to the main motel reception area. There was a single fluorescent light buzzing overhead, with two stained chairs in the waiting area. The desk was vacated, and I had to step up to ring the bell. My fingers came back greasy after the ding echoed out through the empty room, and a man came from a back room, glaring at me.

"Can I help you?" he said gruffly.

I nodded, handing over the drawings of Frank and Warner that I had been carrying around all day. "Ha-have you s-seen, either of them?"

He took the drawings from me, frowning at them, then looking up at me again. "What's your deal with 'em?"

"I-I, I--G-Greg, h-he...called me. W-we're, we're--"

"Oh, Jesus, I don't care. Look, if you're going to be shacking up with those queers, just pay. Got it? I don't care what you faggots do, just don't make a mess. Now, that's thirty. Give it."

I nodded at him again, digging for bills in my pocket. I dropped two twenty dollar bills on the counter, and I heard him bark a room number at me, give me a key and my ten dollars back. The money went in my pocket and my feet went out the door. Once the screen door of the main building battered shut behind me, I started running. Running down to room 22. It was at the end of the row, and I passed door after door in the dark, going down to the end and running up a set of stairs to the second level of the stairs. My hands gripped the railing as I hauled myself upwards, and I slapped my hand against the door of room 22 once I found it, not stopping to catch my breath as I jammed the key into the lock.

When I got inside, I was too busy staring at the pea-green of the carpet, slumping against the door after I shut it to notice much else. My mind was speeding too quickly forward on adrenaline to think properly of what I was doing, of why I was there. I saw big, wide water stains on the carpet, I saw the dingy trail of a sheet out of the corner of my eye. There was the bottom post of a nightstand, dark brown wood with lighter chips taken out of it. I heard a television, some movie channel. It was an old movie, I could tell by how muffled the sound was, the sound of fifties films. I heard breathing, heavy, heavy breathing hauling and heaving out of my lungs as I clung to the handle. I was trying not to drop to my knees. And then I heard my name. I heard Frank's voice in the heat of the room. It was stuffy, muddled inside. Too hot, and I was too hot to be in it, too sweaty. But I heard him. I heard Frank. 

"Gerard?"

"Frank? Frank!" I bleated out, falling forward to hands and knees on the carpet.

"Gerard, what...what are you doing here? You have to get out of here, seriously, I don't know when he'll--"

"No, Frank...Frankie, no..." I breathed, pushing myself to my feet and stumbling over to him. "Frank, Frankie, you're...you're, you're okay, you're here..."

I nearly fell onto Frank, and he hauled me onto the bed. He had to have hauled me, because I found my nose smelled with the smell of mildew and the smell of him, my face resting on clammy sheets. I squeezed Frank tight to me, and his hair tickled my nose, short and prickly. I pulled back to look at him, realizing that his hair had been shaved off. Wordlessly, I reached out to touch it, the shorn fuzz of it sharp beneath my fingers. He looked at me, then looked down at the pillow he had fallen upon. He was wearing different clothes, not the ones he had left in this morning. They were baggy, too big on him. I wondered if they were even the clothes of Warner himself. The jeans were nearly falling off of Frank's hips, and the t-shirt he was wearing was worn thin. Frank looked cold, looked pale.

"What happened to you?" I mumbled as I reached out for him again. Frank batted my hand away, drawing his knees up to his chest.

"You need to go, Gerard."

"No, Frank, I can't, I--I came to rescue you! I'm, getting you...getting you out of here. Come on, Frankie, we have to go. We have to."

"Don't call me that," Frank groaned, leaning onto his knees, running a hand through the remnants of his hair. "Please just don't. I fucked up, okay? So just let it go."

"You--no, Frank, what happened? What did you do?"

Frank looked at me, grinning. "Didn't do it right. I didn't...I owe Warner. Cause he was supposed to...I was supposed to...you know. It happened."

I sat up on the bed, brushing my hair out of my eyes again. Frank was limp. He was slouching over limp on his knees, and his words weren't coming out correctly. I hadn't noticed before, there hadn't been enough air in my lungs to function properly. But Frank wasn't right, not right now. His eyes were drooped down, and he stopped leaning on his knees, moved again to lie down on the bed. He was covered in goosebumps, but he didn't reach for the blanket. Bruises, too. His skin was black and blue all over his arms. His cheek was stained with the evidence that he'd been hurt. Warner, obviously. I felt myself shaking with the realization, but made my eyes steal away from Frank, turn to the rest of the room. The wallpaper was ugly, ugly enough for any motel. Frank and I were occupying the single bed in the room, our shoes still on as we rested on it. I pushed myself off of the bed.

Across the floor, there was only one suitcase. It had some dirty clothes, Frank's clothes from this morning, I recognized. Next to it was a can of lighter fluid, a box of matches. I turned away from that, hoping Warner's only intention was to burn Frank's clothes. I could deal with that thought, but the thought of flames ripping Frank's flesh, staining and destroying him, that was not one for me to think of. I couldn't. The main room was small, cramped, and I creaked open the door to the bathroom instead. It was filthy, with dirt in every crevice of the tile. On the toilet tank the clippers rested, a few hairs of Frank's still clinging to the blade. I yanked back the shower curtain, finding a dirty floor covered in Frank's hair. I reached in, picking up a lock of what I had used to be so fond of touching, of sketching. Warner had destroyed that. Warner had destroyed so much, I grimaced as I let the hair fall from my hands.

The clippers weren't the only thing in the bathroom. There were several small prescription bottles, boasting labels for painkillers that I didn't trust. I had been on painkillers before, and the pills inside were the wrong shape. Next to the pills, a tall bottle of vodka stood as well. They weren't to stop pain, they were to drug Frank. Frank had to have been drugged, that was why he had been kidnapped in the first place. He would've fought back if not for that. I know he would have. Frank was not the type to just roll over and give himself up. To me he hadn't, even. I had been the one to roll for Frank, as things should be. The world was meant to bow to Frank. Frank wasn't meant to be medicated into bowing his head in the next room over.

I stepped into the main room again, Frank still slumped over. He was quiet now. It was possible that he had only briefly broken out of the drug rush to identify me. But it didn't matter. Whether he could walk or not, it didn't matter. I would take him out of here by my own means. Returning to the bed, I crouched down beside Frank to scoop my arms up beneath his body. He was lighter than I remembered from previous contact, and he was weak in my arms. I held him close to my chest, his breathing steady if he wasn't. But because Frank was lighter than I remembered didn't mean that he was light. His limp body was heavy in my arms, and I could feel my back beginning to give. But I wasn't going to give. The reality of the situation hit me again, and the best course of action hit quickly after that.

Run.

I forced my way out of the door, managing the handle with my elbow and only pulling it shut behind me to create an illusion for Warner. If he came by, if he saw the shut door, it would serve as a somewhat sufficient illusion. It would work for now, and now was the only thing that was an issue. I ran faster than I had before, my sneakers skidding on the concrete of the balconies, stomping their way down the stairs. I wasn't so clumsy as I normally felt. Not with this sacred baggage. I ran as fast as I could to my car, a desperate, lurching run, and let Frank fall down on my hood once I reached it, hastily jiggling the key in the lock, flicking open the side door and hauling Frank in. I reached over to buckle his seat belt, carefully arranging him to lean against the window once I had established him. I didn't touch him again until my engine was roaring and my own door was sealed, and it was then that I reached over, let my hand fall against the bruise on his cheek.

"Love you, Frank," I said softly in the car, leaning over to kiss him before shoving my car into reverse. I didn't have the time I wanted with Frank. Not now. But this, what I was about to do, would establish that I had a Frank later. That he wouldn't be lost to me.

My car screeched and crunched on the gravel as I pulled out of my parking space, slamming the gas to race down the road of an hour, two hours before? It had probably only been minutes. I ignored the speed limit on the road, doubling it beneath my wheels. I had to get to the police station. I had to hand Frank over, I couldn't keep him with me. It had been keeping him with me that led to the whole disaster in the first place. Everything was centered around Warner's vengeance. To him, I had stolen Frank. And it was true, it really was true. But if Frank was my responsibility now, then I would do what was the responsible thing to do. 

I had just reached the turn I had swung into earlier when a reckless car blazed around past me, the headlights of my nightmares flashing in my windshield once again. I slammed on the brakes, letting him blow past me as I held my breath. When his taillights were ticking out of view of my rear view mirror, that was when I started again. I shot out of the turn, past the alleyway, out of the gas station and onto the main road. I knew vaguely where the police station was, though that wasn't to say I wouldn't get lost. It was near the public school, I thought. But I couldn't remember if it was the high school or the middle school. I made the drive down to my middle school, then, hoping it would be close enough to it. If it was adjacent like I was trying to remember.

I got there, it wasn't, and I swore at myself. It was the high school. It had to be by the public high school, all the way on the other side of town. That was what I remembered, I remembered that the police would always run across the street to break up gang violence. That so many kids walked across the stage at graduation and straight into a cell on the other side of the sidewalk. It hadn't been hard to graduate the public high school. They made it especially easy for the "dangerous" kids, thinking a high school diploma would encourage them, give them more opportunities in life. It didn't work. High school diplomas, I briefly thought, didn't do a thing in the long run. 

Run. Running, that was what I was doing again when I pounded into the police station. Across from the high school. That had all gone by in a blur, the parking and the hauling of the Frank moved past a lot more quickly in my memory once it hit the point when I had noticed headlights in my rearview mirror once again. They had advanced quickly, more quickly as I drove up onto the sidewalk, tumbling out of my car. Running to the passenger side, I unbuckled Frank and pulled him out, dragging him up the steps to the station and jamming the handle open with my hand. I ran in, as far to the front desk as I could manage, and then I fell down. 

I felt something hit me. I heard the door banging open again behind me, and officers yelling. Some kind of sound going off, gunshots, maybe the door kept slamming, I wasn't sure. There was something hurting me, in my leg. But I realized where I was, and that was on top of Frank. Frank, with his mouth gently hanging open, his eyes starting to blink at me. He mouthed some word, but I couldn't hear it. It was too loud in the station. I rolled off of him, realizing he must need space to breathe, and fell on my back beside him, on the carpeting. It was rough beneath the backs of my hands, and I reached a hand out to touch Frank's rough scalp instead. 

"It'll grow back," I mumbled to him, stroking at the side of his head and letting my hand skid down his face. I heard a sequence of shots, and heard yelling, more yelling. "Shh, Frank. They're like your games. They're really loud," I said to him, rolling onto my side. It hurt. I didn't know why it hurt.

"They're fun," he said back, looking at me. 

His eyes were starting to go clear again. They didn't look as glassy. I could see the brown of them better than before, at least briefly. They were fading out, though, as though something was blurring them on my side of things. I could still feel fine, though. I could feel Frank's cheek, warm under the palm of my hand. And the back of my hand was warm, too. I felt the soft weight of Frank's palm on top of my hand, and his fingers laced with mine, briefly. It was brief because then I couldn't see him for a little while, and then I couldn't really feel him either. I heard the yelling though, yelling, yelling, and yelling. The last thing I heard before I lost that sense was Frank. Frank saying something I couldn't understand. But really, it didn't matter what Frank had tried to say. As long as he was there. As long as I could hear him.

I wouldn't need to hear anything else, I thought, although the end of Frank's sentence was punctuated with another shot. It was after that, after that final sound when things went completely silent.


	25. Chapter 25

The way the newspapers would go on to describe everything a day later would open up with how Frank was a fifteen year old freshman at Queen of Peace Catholic School. An average, innocent student. Quiet, calm, and mediocre. It would describe his parents, his mother a housewife, his father a prominent businessman. His school photograph accompanied the article, next to a family photograph. It looked like it was from several years ago, with Frank appearing a lot younger. I touched the photo when I received the newspaper, another piece of his life. I would remember it. After the brief introduction of Frank and his family, it detailed his kidnapping, the date and time he had gone missing and where he had been found. This was where my name came in. They called me a "friend" of Frank's, and said I had found him and brought him to the police station.

There were other parts to the newspaper story, of course. They gave a profile of Warner, describing him as a degenerate alcoholic and ex-schoolteacher. For now he was under questioning, about to be confronted with other allegations (namely, molestation). The newspaper explained that he had picked Frank up in his car, drugged him, and held him captive in a hotel room for hours before Frank was rescued. That was the word to describe what I had done. The newspaper filled in the gaps in my own memory, making it more clear that Warner had followed us to the police station, that he had been in possession of a gun. The gun made sense, thinking about how he had left the motel and then returned to it. The gun could've only been meant for Frank. I didn't need a newspaper to tell me that Warner must've picked it up in that time lull.

The gun also explained why I was lying in a hospital bed, leg tied up with stitches. In the police station, Warner had started firing shots at Frank's rescuer (me), as well as all of the officers who attempted to beat him down. A stray bullet caught my leg, and two other officers were injured. Frank, miraculously, hadn't been hit. Warner had been brought down with gunshot wounds, which he was currently being treated for, as well as the work of one brave young copper with a taser in hand. Frank's whereabouts were left unknown by the newspaper. I knew I would be seeing him again shortly, though. As a trial witness.

I had already been interviewed by a lawyer, looped up on pain medication and unable to do anything except drool at the man who came to visit me. A week later the phone calls started pouring in, though, coordinating times for interviews and times for hearings. They never allowed me to conference with Frank, though. They never allowed me to see him. I asked, but they told me it was impossible. Frank was recovering from the trauma, Frank was with his parents, Frank was meeting with a therapist, Frank was meeting with a lawyer, a case worker, the school board. He was the most wanted boy in the city, both by legal workers and the media. I couldn't believe that anyone would want him more than I did, though.

The case was so widely publicized, with the news station harping at my house day in and day out, that I gained some "free passes" from it. Business at the deli had skyrocketed once word got out that I worked there, although I had been given two weeks leave to recover from my injuries. My boss also didn't want to deal with me being bothered on the job, although she didn't mind dealing with media once she put a sign on the door saying anyone entering the building had to buy something. Even if they didn't see me, they were still stuck bolstering business. My school also gave me a free pass, and made sure to lock their doors to everyone outside. I received a letter in the mail apologizing for my trauma, saying I was excused from final exams. I was handed a report card, too, loading me up with solid Cs and Bs for spring semester. It was an improvement from the Fs and Ds I thought I had. I believed that to have been working on my side, too.

There was no final gallery show for me this semester, not like I had much to show for it. I hadn't created very much this semester. I'd been busy with Frank, an effort that had clearly been worth something. The media touted me as an "unlikely lifesaver" and an "unexpected hero." No one commented on me aside from that. They couldn't pull up much on me aside from the fact that I was an average community college student, Belleville resident, the year I graduated high school. The media focus was more on Warner. He was scandalous, exciting. His picture was constantly on the news, with pictures of him sitting in his cell, clad in orange. It was a fantastic story, especially as they dug through his apartment, uncovering evidence. The biggest deal was a diary that they had found.

The diary explained how Warner had been involved sexually with Frank, down to the line. It explained when the affair started, with Warner apparently blaming Frank for the events that conspired. It revealed not only the evidence of Warner having sex with Frank, but also assaulting Frank during intercourse. There were records of abuse in the pages of Warner's diary, but there were also plans. Plans after Frank apparently left him, to get back at Frank for the loss of his job, the loss of his lifestyle. The loss of his mind, clearly, but Warner didn't comment on that. They were pulling receipts and empty bottles out of his apartment, testifying to his alcoholism, as well as statements from the school board over the terms of Warner's firing. Repeated absences, outbursts, disorderly conduct, showing up to work intoxicated. The school board described how it had been a sudden shift in behavior, how no one had expected this behavior from him.

He had been a good teacher, they said. No one could have seen this coming.

What no one else saw coming was the detailed description of what Warner had been planning. All of the notes for the kidnapping had been in place weeks before. It described that Frank hung out at the deli, that the "fat fuck" (me) always drove him home. "Must avoid the fat fuck," the book read. They interviewed my boss, who confirmed how Warner had stalked out the building day in and day out, his violent behavior at it. Warner had written in notes about buying the pills and alcohol to drug Frank with, noting something about "the little shit finally getting his fix." He had written for pages and pages about how he daydreamed about killing Frank. He had debated between using a knife and using a gun, and wrote about how he wanted to mutilate Frank. To "destroy his stupid smug face," among other things. I couldn't listen to all of it, not all the time. It was too much to hear.

I shuddered, looking down at the newspaper again. It had been the fifth time I'd read it in the past hour, as there was little to do otherwise inside of the hospital. I spent a lot of time staring at Frank's image on the paper, outlining the blurry edges of his jaw. Mikey came in at one point, taking the newspaper away from me. He had taken my bag home, the nurses had informed me. My brother brought no pity or sympathy with him when he came to the hospital room to visit me, although I hadn't been expecting it. He seemed to be on edge, to at least resent me in a way. But he had little to worry about. I was harmless to him, drooping in a sea of medication and long, long naps.

The naps continued when I returned home a couple days later, gracelessly hobbling my way down to my basement. My mother had suggested that I sleep upstairs on the couch, but I declined. My family didn't want me upstairs, I knew that just as well. I may be a "hero," but as Mikey had tugged me aside to tell me, the whole thing was still "sketchy." He told me how he had ran down to my room as soon as the case broke through the news, digging through all of my artwork and stuffing it in boxes, into closets, under my bed. How it would be bad news for me if the papers found out about any of my "creepy shit," and that it might interfere with the trial. Mikey warned me, hissing under his breath, that I might be in the same position as Warner if I wasn't careful. 

I ignored Mikey's comments for the most part, mostly just understanding that I would need to uncover everything he had hidden in the crevices and corners of my room. That wouldn't be for tonight, though. I wasn't able to move around easily enough, not with the crutches I was forced to rely on. I did know where to find my most recent sketchbook, though. It was resting safely on my bed, deep in my backpack from school. I had left it there before I'd gone out to look for Frank, knowing it would be incriminating should anyone find it in my absence. I hadn't thought about it before, but after everything that had happened, I realized that I had been in real danger of not returning to my room. If I hadn't found Frank in that single pocket of time when Warner was absent, or if he had returned with the gun a moment sooner, I could have been lost. Even at the police station, he could've gotten me.

The thought didn't bother me as much as it should. It would have been for Frank, and that was the reason I had covered him with my body during the chaos at the police station. Perhaps my leg had even saved him, blocking the bullet from straying somewhere more vital. I didn't want to roll over the alternate possibilities of what could have happened in my mind. I had heard what was in Warner's journals, I did not need those messages to be repeated. I eased myself into my bed carefully, wincing as my leg brushed against the sheets. It was horrible, the pain. I was in absolute agony whenever the pain medication wore off, but as I flipped my sketchbook open, I felt it actually lessen. Because Frank was before my eyes again, and as my fingers turned through the pages, his face and body before me calmed me enough to sleep.

I didn't see Frank in the flesh again until several weeks later. I hadn't been at work of course, and I doubted Frank would have been permitted to go outside anyway. He was a minor victim in a high profile court case, and even if just for the media's sake, no further harm could befall him. The trial happened speedily given the media obsession with the "Catholic Schoolboy and Crazed Teacher" case, calling him the "Belleville Lolita." Some of the sleazier news sites were focusing on the graphic sexual details provided by Warner's journal, uploading them to web blogs for all to see. I didn't want to read about what Frank had done what Warner. It would only corrupt my memory of what Frank had done with me. Aside from that, there were "testimonies" from other men Frank had supposedly slept with, dozens of them. They were all very detailed, but very anonymous. I couldn't know if they were true or not. I didn't want to think it was possible that Frank had slept with that many men.

They called me into the courtroom a little after the trail sessions began, having me testify for five hours. Really, it was only about forty-five minutes of me on the stand. The rest was spent waiting in a room alone. I was escorted in by an officer, sweating and shaking behind the stand. Warner was in the room, handcuffed and surrounded by police officers. I looked around, searching for Frank. He was there, sitting sullenly next to a lawyer. His hair was starting to grow out slightly, although it was still far too short. It emphasized how pale he still was, how thin he remained. The bags around his eyes were heavily pronounced, and I gaped at him desperately before I began to speak, hoping he would catch my eye and look up at me. 

I went through the whole history of how Warner had stalked the deli, of how my manager had forced a restraining order on him and how he had harassed my coworkers. From there I then detailed the time that Warner had confronted Frank, and then moved into the more recent events. I described the hotel room in detail, and stutteringly explained that I had been hanging out at Frank's house watching movies until the early hours of the morning. That was how I had seen Warner come into Frank's neighborhood, and how I knew who to look for after the fact. They asked me of my motivation in helping, and I mumbled that Frank was my best friend. The judge nodded and didn't press matters any further. I was dismissed after that. 

Frank hadn't looked up at me once.


	26. Chapter 26

I spent all of my time after my court appearance following Frank's case on the news. It was dragged out over weeks, for the sake of the media. It was scandalous. One of the biggest cases to ever come out of Jersey, which was saying something. National news covered it and milked it for all it was worth, pulling Warner apart until his inevitable conviction. Frank's hair grew out a little bit longer each day as I watched him on the television. I adjusted my drawings of him accordingly, lying in bed for maybe seven hours a day, sketching Frank with my leg propped up on a pillow before I fell asleep each night. Well, each afternoon. I was in the habit of rising early and going to bed earlier, assisted by a bottomless prescription for pain pills, sleeping pills, and "whatever else" I would need.

The doctor sympathized with me, and I really only used the sleeping pills. Being awake was difficult. My leg ached, but aside from that, there was no point in me being awake. There was no chance that I would see Frank, and even less of a chance that anything productive or interesting would happen to me during my waking hours. I had no job, no school, nothing to attend to except for myself. And there wasn't much of me that was worth attending to. I couldn't remember the last time I had bathed, not wanting to go to the trouble of keeping my leg dry in a tub. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt the urge to move and do anything. It had probably been the last time I had seen Frank.

Something had been wrong in the courtroom. Obviously, there was all of the trauma that Frank had experienced. I couldn't help but to blame myself for it--for everything that had happened. If I hadn't been at Frank's house, he wouldn't have been so vulnerable in the first place. No one could tell me that part wasn't true. It wasn't like anyone was going to, either. Mikey was suspicious of me. But he couldn't say a thing. He didn't know what had happened, and he was trying to distance himself from the case as much as possible. I'd heard him complaining upstairs about how he was being harassed at school, pressed for details about the case. I assumed Frank hadn't been going to school. He didn't belong there in the first place.

Frank wasn't meant to be hustled along in a gaggle of smelly, slimy children. He wasn't meant to be laid out on a dinner plate before predators like Warner. I didn't want to push the idea that Frank was only meant for me. That his presence was reserved for me in any way at all. But I couldn't help feeling that way. If it had been only Frank and I, it would have been a different scenario. If I had been permitted to have Frank all to myself, I would've been able to document him into the works of art he belonged in, portraits and inspired landscapes and sculptures and media I hadn't even stumbled across yet. I'd support us both, in a house tucked away where no harm could befall him. He'd have whatever he wanted, and I would have him. That was all I wanted, him to myself.

I wondered if that didn't make me just as bad as Warner.

I wasn't Warner, though. I hadn't done what he had done. I had never hurt Frank, and I would never want to hurt Frank. I'd only ever touched Frank in the first place because he had prompted me to, and I knew I didn't need to touch him. I had gone without. I could cope with only seeing him, with only gazing on from a distance. 

That was a lie.

That was a lie, and I knew it. 

I was miserable, only seeing Frank filtered through cable wires and television screens. I missed him. I missed hearing his voice outside of a testimony, I missed the way our fingers would sometimes skid together when I handed him his food at the deli. Even though it had only been once, I missed sleeping with him more than I knew I could miss anything in the world. The warm press of his body beside mine, the way his smaller frame fit inside of my bulky arms: never good until now, only recently discovered to be good at something. Good at holding Frank. I was good at that. I had been good at that. I would be better with new practice, but I knew that was practice I was never going to receive.

They convicted Warner a while later, on a whole stack of counts and charges I couldn't keep track of. He was incarcerated for a long while, longer due to the publicity involved that had turned him into such a demon in the eyes of the public. I certainly didn't need the publicity to shift my opinion of him towards that. I had seen the whole scene laid out before me, Frank's limp body on the bed, the grime of the motel, the pills on the counter and Frank's hair in the bathtub. Warner was vile. Despicable. He'd done it all for the attention, the glory of killing Frank. At least, he would've done it all. I had stopped him before things had gotten to that point. I didn't want to think of how I would've seen Frank before me if I hadn't. I had gone through all of my old artwork, finding the old drawings of Frank befalling mysterious injuries and deaths. They were abstracted, unspecific, but I remembered what had brought them on. I just hadn't ever thought something actually would happen to Frank. 

Easing myself up from the bed, I winced my way upstairs to the kitchen. I needed to eat something, I could feel my stomach rolling and groaning inside of me. I dug out cereal and milk, unsure and uninterested in anything else lying around in the fridge. My leg was on the way to healing, it was probably fine at this point, but it still ached. I ached. My body was one overwhelming ache with the absence of Frank. The food tasted like paper, but I swallowed it down regardless as I stared at the table in front of me.

Mikey's hands appeared on the placemat, interrupting my view of the knotted wood. "So they put him away," he stated, interrupting my private dinner as well. I swallowed, nodding. I wasn't sure why Mikey would decide to talk to me.

"They should put you away, too. It's obvious what you were doing at his house that night."

"I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just visiting him."

Mikey snorted. "Right. After your creepy shit stalking the school, and how much of a whore that kid is? Bullshit you weren't fucking."

"Frank's not a whore!" I snapped, slamming my hands on the table and shaking the bowl of cereal. "Don't say that about him!"

"Unlike you, Gerard, I actually went to school with him. I didn't just watch him from outside and draw him. Freak."

"I saved his life!"

"Yeah? Go ahead and tell yourself that. But I'm the one who saved your life by hiding all your sick shit. I saw what you were drawing. I almost threw up when I was cleaning everything in your room, you drawing that kid naked. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me! You shouldn't have gone through my things!" I yelled, my chair screeching backwards as I stood up, briefly towering over Mikey until he got to his feet as well.

"I shouldn't have gone through your things? You wanna tell me that one? Well guess what Gerard, the police came scouring through our house while you were still in the hospital and you know what? If it hadn't been for me, you'd be sitting right next to that other pervert in jail. So you should thank me. I should've burned that shit, you know that?" Mikey scowled at me.

"Don't you touch my Frank!"

"Oh, shut up, he's not your Frank, Gerard. That kid doesn't belong to anyone. You know what he is? He's trash! That kid sucks off anyone who strikes his fancy, you were nothing special."

"Don't talk about him like that!" I screamed, picking up the open gallon of milk and chucking it at Mikey's head. He dodged it, the contents flying through the air in a stream before bursting out onto the floor as the carton exploded into a puddle. 

I heard Mikey holler something else after me, but I couldn't place it. I wasn't able to filter his voice through my ears as I ran back down to my basement--or rather, hobbled away on the best speed my legs could manage. I locked the door tight behind me, nearly falling down the stairs as my bad leg caught a step the wrong way. But I didn't care. I crawled back on my bed, digging out all of the sketches and drawings that I had accumulated of Frank over the past string of months. It had nearly been a year at this point, nearly a year with Frank.

It had been nearly a year drawing him from a distance. And distance wasn't enough right now. After everything that had happened, after the hells I had been through--and certainly the worse hells that Frank had been through--distance wasn't enough right now. I needed to see him in person, my leg be damned. I pushed myself off of the bed, letting open sketchbooks tumble off of my knees and back onto the bedsheets. My car keys were sitting on the nightstand beside empty cups, untouched since the last time I had driven. Since before everything had happened. I clenched them in my hand, gripping the jagged edges of them against my sweaty palm as I pulled myself up the stairs to the main level of my house, and then out the door. There was no Mikey there to stop me.

I grimaced trying to haul my still fragile leg into the driver's seat, but fortunately my right one hadn't been the one to get shot. I turned on the ignition, leaving the radio off as I crept out of my neighborhood and onto the freeway, along the roads and turnstiles that led me to Frank's house, the road I had memorized so well by this point in everything. I would park close to his house this time, right in front of the mailbox. There was no longer a reason to hide my involvement with Frank. All of Jersey, all of the world was aware that we'd had a thing, a small thing of sorts. They knew I was his friend. I knew there was more than friendship, but no one else had to be alerted to the real facts of it. It wasn't any of their business. They could air out Warner on any podium they found, but no one would wring a thing out of me.

The drive took longer than it usually did, partially due to traffic and more largely due to my nerves. I didn't know what Frank would be like once I found him. I took the spot by the mailbox with all the courage I had, though it wasn't much, and I went to the door as I never did before. I rang the bell. Instead of clamoring through Frank's tiny window, here I was on his stoop. I had earned my place now, I supposed. It didn't really feel right though. Being on Frank's porch, leaning on a bad leg, it simply didn't have the same feel as sneaking into his bedroom in the midnight hours did. It could be because Frank and I didn't belong in daylight. But that was ridiculous, I recounted. I had seen Frank just as much in the day as I had ever seen him at night. The difference was, it had been dreary and overcast in winter whenever I'd seen him before. It was just now pushing into spring and sunlight. Sunlight that I'd trade for winter any day. I would have given anything for the trauma of Warner to have never happened to Frank. I hadn't done enough in saving him, not simply saving him, no. The whole mess should've never happened in the first place.

There was no response after three consecutive rings of the bell, nor a series of knocks. Perhaps they simply weren't home. I contemplated trying to bang on Frank's bedroom window next, hoping he might be home alone and asleep, but I was halted before my shoes even hit the grass by a neighbor.

"Hey! Lookin' for the kid from the news?" a man in a wifebeater next door hollered. He was smoking a cigarette, squinting at me.

"I--I, yeah, I'm his--his friend, d-do you know--"

"Moved!" the man exclaimed before I could finish stuttering out the rest of my sentence.

"M-moved?" I repeated.

"Yeah! Packed up last week, last I heard they were going to San Fran, Dallas, L.A., somewhere warm and far away. I don't give a shit for details, just know it's sunny and it ain't Jersey. That family didn't wanna deal with the scandal of staying here, I guess. Don't blame em! Not like that kid could go to school anymore after fuckin' a teacher, right? Hey! That where you know him? From school? You a teacher too?" the man guffawed, collapsing into a chair on his saggy porch. "Shit, you wanna stay away from that kid. He's trouble!"

I didn't say anything, I just turned around and ran back to my car. I blew past the speed limits on the way home, and it was a miracle I didn't get pulled over. The drive was too long this time, but not for anxiety over seeing Frank. I pulled into the driveway, slamming the door behind me and saying nothing to my parents and their inquiries after I got indoors. I sailed in a haze down to my basement, again locking myself in, again collapsing in the drawings of Frank that I had salvaged from Mikey's hideaways. Frank, to now exist only in drawings. Frank, torn from the Jersey overcast and shoved into sunlight. A new place. Far, far away. Frank was gone. Frank hadn't been taken by Warner this time, but he'd still been taken from me.

Frank was gone.

I picked up one of the drawings I had thrown to the side of my bed earlier, only to scream and fling it away again as soon as I caught sight of Frank's face. I had drawn it from life. I remembered the date and the setting, and the worst fact of all that it had been in his bedroom. Captured in a space that Frank no longer inhabited, inside rooms and rafters he'd deserted. He was gone. He had been stolen away. I blew through my sketchbooks, turning pages so fast they tore as a homemade animation sequence of Frank ripped past my vision. Frank sitting, standing, smiling, sprawled into poses I'd never again see him in. I threw the books away from me, curling up into a ball on my bed and sobbing, desperately reaching my hands out and clawing at my sheets.

My fingers took hold of fabric and I dragged it in close to me, close to my face. I recognized it as being a sweatshirt, specifically the sweatshirt I'd worn one of the last times I'd seen Frank in person. I forced it into my nostrils to try and sniff in any remaining scent of Frank, but it had long since evaporated. All I could smell was the mildew of my basement, the stale stench of my own sweat. There wasn't a trace of Frank, there was no trace anywhere in this room. He had touched my clothes, touched me, but there was no proof of that. There was no lingering smell, no fingerprints to dust for. All that was left were my stupid drawings, scattered carelessly along the floor of my room.

Maybe that was what the problem had been. I had let Frank scatter too carelessly away from me. The problem wasn't Warner, it wasn't his parents, it wasn't Frank itself. It was me. I had seen what was held within Frank, I'd evaluated and affirmed all of his worth to him the best I could. But that "best" had been far from enough. In understanding the very concept of Frank, Frank as a being and not mere boy, I should've understood that he could not simply be treated in the same manner as any other boy off the street. Affection, attention, and gifts weren't enough. They hadn't been enough in Frank's case because he required something different. Something that was simply a "bigger deal," to suit just how big of a deal he was. Maybe not to the world, who saw it so easy to dispose of him once he lost his "media appeal," once he was spent as a scandal. But to me, he was my world. There was nothing on earth that would ever match him. Not in appeal, and not in value.

I was glad to have the excuse of my bum leg still, because it was impossible for me to move from my bed. I stumbled to the bathroom occasionally, but otherwise just laid on my bed drifting between unpleasant sleep and staring at the ceiling. There was no meaning for me to get up and look for another job, or answer the calls I'd received from the deli asking if I wanted my old job back. I couldn't move from my bed, much less go outside. It was impossible. Living was impossible without Frank. Belleville was impossible. Everything was impossible.

I was in the middle of a resting period when I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake from a sleeping spell. It was my mother complaining about the mess down in my room, the laundry, the smell. She mentioned portfolios, art, things I couldn't comprehend. I was half asleep, as I always was now. Sleep was where all my memories of Frank lived, inside dreams and subconscious realities. I felt her open my clammy palms up and shove a letter in between my fingers. She ordered me to open it, to respond to it. She said it was important. I couldn't comprehend how anything could be important in the world as it was now. Certainly, nothing was important to me.

I rolled back over for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. Maybe it had been months, maybe years in the time constraints of the waking world. I didn't keep track of those things anymore. I had detached my tethers to it. 

The letter went unopened, untouched until my mother returned in the fuzzy time that took place between when she had first given me the letter and when I had fallen back asleep. She splashed cold water on my face, forced coffee into my system, forced me into the shower. She followed me around nagging, forcing me to pick up my laundry and put it in the dryer. To clean up the "pigsty" my room had turned into. And to read the letter. To respond to it.

I couldn't think of a soul in the world that would want a response from me, until I let the contents of the envelope fall into my hands. It was a letter from SVA. In New York City. I was holding an acceptance letter in my hands, a school I'd forgotten submitting a second portfolio application to in prioritization of Frank. A school that before, due to distance, I never would've dreamt of attending. An artistic dream I couldn't sacrifice Frank for. A goal I refused to chase when the only thing I had been interested in chasing was Frank.

But Frank was gone, and Belleville was nothing to me now.

I sat up straight for the first time in days, and grabbed a pen from my bedside table. It was a pen I thought I had lost to the mysterious fibers of Frank's bedroom, but had somehow resurfaced in my time of need. Not a time of need for me to draw Frank, but a time for me to escape every memory of Frank that this town held inside of its pavement. I circled "accepted" on the letter on the envelope, for no purpose but my own. I needed to complete the official forms online, to obtain transfers and do mountains of paperwork. But I knew I wouldn't be working over papers with Frank's face anymore. Not in classrooms, not in new cities, perhaps only in the lonely confines of whatever apartment I would grow to inhabit once I left Belleville. The basement was nothing to me any longer, not mine nor the memory of Frank's. I couldn't let the mildew of the underground pollute me any longer. Frank had shaken the dust of this soggy old town off of him with the escape he made, escaping out of scandals and soured reputations.

Frank was gone, and now I would be gone too.

Belleville would rot on without us.

(end)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this is it! the final chapter of this story....one year, four days, 239 pages and 128,000 words later. thank you so much to you if you have stuck with this fic and read it all the way to the end. it means so much, and i can only hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.
> 
> \--xxx sparky


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